#324 (of 365) "Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)" Arcade Fire

Arcade Fire are definitely one of the more polarizing bands on this countdown. And by "polarizing" I mean--shifting from the wildest highs of excited superfandom circa 2004 to 2010 to barely listening to them post-Reflektor, their difficult bad fourth release. Everything Now, their fifth album, which hardly blipped onto my radar in 2017, was downright bad, and although follow-up We in 2022 was decent enough, with a couple tracks that reminded me of the good-old-days of Funeral-era music ("Lookout Kid," for one) it was all a little done by then, or I was done as a fan. It happens. It happens more often than not, actually, for my music taste to change or the band's music to change and when they stop connecting, I lose interest, even in band's I once wrote an entire novel about like Arcade Fire.

The original draft of my first novel I WILL BE OKAY was based on two teens trying to attend the first sold-out show in NYC for Arcade Fire at Bowery Ballroom, set in 2003, if I recall correctly... in later drafts, I ditched the now-dated references and replaced Arcade Fire with The World Is a Beautiful Place, when I fell in love with them in 2013, and the rest, I guess, is history.

Anyway, Arcade Fire still managed to place seven songs on this countdown, including this one from 2010's The Suburbs, their last great album release.

"Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains" - Arcade Fire // The Suburbs (2010)