The Suburbs (Continued)

This song loops perfectly with the first song in the album. It feels like you awake from a dream only to start the same thing over again, fitting perfectly with the idea of the monotonous suburbs.

I wish the fadeout to this track was more gradual... it's so sudden.

this is so abstract. a perfect ending to such and emotional album.

Yeah, the full album is absolutely genius. The song fades out to represent how our childhood is slowly drifting away the older we get. I also noticed that someone referred to the song as like "a dream" and it matches the first song perfectly. You're dead on with that. The Suburbs song starts with a massive gong, as if trying to wake you up, which I believe is a recurring theme throughout the album. Waking up. Realising your childhood is drifting away and how much everyone wants it back but just can't get it.

This song brought me close to tears, it really is the perfect outro. After hearing The Suburbs album for the first time, I went around the streets on my bike trying to relive my memories a little bit, but much like Half Light says, it just felt so hollow. Like the fun had just been drained.

Best band on earth? I think so.

this is so beautiful. i wish it were longer. maybe that's why they put it at the end, to keep us longing for more.

This is an awesome ending. Reminds me of when i think back wishing i could have done something more productive with my life but then realizing that if I did go back i would most like just "waste" it again and again and again and that's just how life works.

When I first listened to this song, right after finishing The Suburbs, I started tearing up. It's just so damn emotional and really makes you want to be young again and relive all those wasted hours you had just being with your friends, pulling pranks, falling madly in love overnight, and just having the time of your life.

Arcade Fire changes your life.

I already posted this on the other page for this song that I got from the direct links to songs from the album but whatever I'll post it here anyway:

In my opinion The Suburbs as a whole is Arcade Fire's most relatable and tangible statement on the human condition. The album covers usual AF themes of being trapped in your own mind and the attempted rejection of the societal pressures/expectations that are on you due to the environment you had growing up.

But this album is specifically talking about your childhood and and how when you're a child you're most free to express yourself and the feelings you feel are most pure. You don't get kids who pretend to like some pretentious abstract art, you don't see kids who pretend to feel or pretend to care. You are your most pure and true when you are a child. To me 'The Suburbs' is about how as you get older you start loosing a sense of who you are. You start having to fill in more and more social expectations. You have to accept the horror of the world we live in. Capitalism drains you of any last piece of real feeling you can get.

So then for me the Sprawl ii is the emotional climax of the album and one of the few optimistic tracks here. The Sprawl is the environment I described in the previous paragraph. Society and the world itself trapping you and suppressing your true self expression. Sprawl ii is about refusing to conform regardless of what people think and fighting against societal pressures to conform.

So then finally when 'The Suburbs (Continued)' it's Win revealing right at the end that truly, he thinks he can never really escape the sprawll. The hollow nature of adulthood and emptiness of capitalism. He reveals that even if he got the chance to live through his childhood allover again, and do something with all that wasted time, he'd only waste it again, and again, again...

To me this is about the human condition and how we're always trapped in our minds and trapped in time. We only realize true beauty once it's already passed. We only see what's worth hanging onto after it's already gone. The only thing we can sure about is the emptiness we feel in the moment, and the longing to escape.

That's just my interpretation anyway!

yeah, looping the CD is great with this leading into the first song. awesome first verse.

Ahhh I want more of this! I wish they'd made a full version of The Suburbs in this eerie/simple/synth style!