Arcade Fire Month of May

Arcade Fire's career is built on sensationally anthemic bombast, so the most striking thing about the two new songs from their forthcoming The Suburbs is that they are relatively modest affairs.  But, then again, almost anything after "Intervention" or "Keep the Car Running" or "No Cars Go" is going to sound modest. "The Suburbs" is a sunny affair that belies the dark lyrics: "But in my dreams, we're still screaming and running through the yard/And all of the walls that they built in the seventies finally fall."  Meanwhile, the claustrophobic new wave of "Month of May" is a pretty radical change for the band. Here, the band swaps the passion of their most carefully crafted songs for the urgency of a distorted guitar and the harsh snap of a snare.