No Kids Here

Of all of the songs on The Arcade Fire's new album, this is the one that I cannot get out of my head. However, Half Light II (No Celebration) (you can listen to the album or selected songs at NPR ) is the one that I want to have stuck in my head. It isn't because that song is any more optimistic. Nope, it is just as sad. However, you can dance to it.

But let's just leave it at this, The Arcade Fire has now officially replaced Radiohead (which held this title since I was in the seventh grade, so it was overdue time to be dethroned), as the band who has the uncanny ability to release an album that absolutely sums up my life at that given moment in time. Take the song, "We Used to Wait," on the album, for example. It reminds me of the days when I used to write stacks of letters that I never had any intention of sending to people, just so I could get my thoughts out on paper. But now, I don't. It makes me think, like Win Butler articultates so perfectly, "Now our lives are changing fast/Hope that something pure can last." If only I could have expressed all of that in such a few, sparse words. Then, in Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains) Regine so perfectly sings, "They heard me singing and they told me to stop/ Quit these pretentious things and just punch the clock/These days my life, I feel it has no purpose/ But late at night the feelings swim to the surface." Who doesn't feel that way about being an adult on occasion, being forced to grow up and deal with the boredom that can sometimes accompany adult responsibilities?

Bravo.