REFERENCES - Arcade Fire - The Suburbs

My very first reference for this project would be Arcade Fire and their new album released in August 2010, called "The Suburbs".
Interesting and ironic as the group is often described as "quintessentially indie" and definitely appeals to modern hipster taste (together with the XX, they must "the most listened to" band in all the "creative" places), yet they new project is all about the problem of spreading hipster uniformity;


"Let's go downtown and watch the modern kids
Let's go downtown and talk to the modern kids
They will eat right out of your hand
Using great big words that they don't understand
They say

Rococo, rococo, rococo, rococo
Rococo, rococo, rococo, rococo

They build it up just to burn it back down
They build it up just to burn it back down
The wind is blowing all the ashes around
Oh my dear god what is that horrible song they're singing

Rococo, rococo, rococo, rococo
Rococo, rococo, rococo, rococo
Rococo, rococo, rococo, rococo
Rococo, rococo, rococo, rococo
Rococo, rococo!
Rococo!

They seem wild but they are so tame
They seem wild but they are so tame
They're moving towards you with their colors all the same
They want to own you but they don't know what game they're playing

... "

Arcade Fire, Rococo

Gurdian's interview with the group from November 2010;

“What I really miss is being forced to be in a community with people that aren't the same as you. Then, you really have to work through the ways that you're different. I think that's important and it's missing in youth culture. I guess some of the songs are a reaction against the tyranny of youth culture, where you only hang around with people who dress like you, think like you and listen to the same music as you. It's scary because it spreads like a virus and it's hard to define yourself against. I think the very notion of the suburbs in the old-fashioned sense – that homogenised sprawl of corporate housing and malls – is like a metaphor for something much bigger (…)

Even though we are seen as the quintessential indie band, I feel very far from that culture a lot of the time."

"I think it goes way further than that," he says, "if you think of the sociological impact of the internet, which has led to this uniformity of taste, this homogenisation of a certain kind of coolness. It's scary because it spreads like a virus and it's hard to define yourself against. I think the very notion of the suburbs in the old-fashioned sense – that homogenised sprawl of corporate housing and malls – is like a metaphor for something much bigger."