New Arcade Fire single out now

Arcade Fire's new single "The Suburbs" with "Month of May" is out now for a $1.99 download on the band's website. According to the band's site, the album, also called The Suburbs is due out on Aug. 3, which now seems like an impossibly long time to wait.

I've only had the single now for about two hours, so it's hard to say anything definitive about it... And there's a great likelihood that I'll change my mind, but so far, the single feels to be both a hit and a miss.

"Month of May" sounds a little slapdash to me. It's a straightforward rocker, a pulsing, guitar-driven number. There's not much else to it. It's good, but not Arcade Fire good. One thing I do like, though, is the guitar sound. Some of the edge that made Funeral so fantastic is back.

"The Suburbs" is a mid-tempo piano romp that sounds more worthy of the Arcade Fire we've come to love. Yet, like "Month of May," the song is simple and, frankly, a little more conventional than I'd expect. Of course, the thing that Arcade Fire does better than just about any other band is write and perform a whole record. They're not a singles band. These are songs out of context at the moment. And as revolutionary as they've sounded, they are essentially a pop-oriented band. 

While I'm not bowled over, there's nothing in these songs to suggest that the new record won't live up to expectations (though one wonders how any band that's done what Arcade Fire has done could possibly live up to expectations). The conventional sound  might be part of the overall theme. This is a record called "The Suburbs," after all.