Home of The Sprawl
A modest proposal for Arcade Fire's Win Butler: Come home to The Woodlands
Win Butler and his wife/bandmate Regina Chassange are the main players in ArcadeFire.
Win Butler — raised in the Woodlands — riffs on life in the suburbs in ArcadeFire's new album.
Arcade Fire is big enough to have been on the cover of the Canadian edition ofTime magazine — five years ago. Butler went to college in Canada, where he methis wife.
Took a drive into the sprawl
To find the house where we used to stay in
Couldn't read the number in the dark
You said let's save it for another day
- “Sprawl (Flatland)” by The Arcade Fire.
Hey Win! Congrats on the new album, and hitting number one; beating the mainstream pop juggernauts is no easier now than it was when Justin Beiber was still in diapers.
Just one thought, though: Why make us your boogeyman? As Houstonians, we’re quite aware of the complicated relationship between being a modern, cosmopolitan city and the suburbs that stretch endless outward from the core. We didn’t need a whole concept album to remind us.
But hey, no hard feelings. You grew up in The Woodlands, and so we’ll gladly claim you as one of ours, even if you’re more Canadian than Texan now. Since the statement that you’re trying to make with The Suburbs ropes together themes of growing older, the declining appeal of “cool," longing for childhood innocence, and corporate homogeny, I think I’ve got a way to put a huge exclamation point on the album.
You’ve stated in interviews that hearing from an old friend from your Woodlands days inspired this album, so what better place to showcase the results than the Cynthia Mitchell Woods Pavilion? I mean, it is The Sprawl! It’s almost as far from downtown Houston as Montreal is from the US-Canada border. But in the spirit of a concept album, why stop there?
The stage show, Win, is where it’s at. If you’re a chart-topping band, you’ve got to put on a show like one, too. The Woodlands Pavilion has a large enough stage to accommodate some of the largest, most dad-jean friendly bands in the country. (Aerosmith! Kid Rock! Dave Matthews!) Think big!
Okay here’s what we’re thinking: Lights slowly come up on the band as you play the intro to “Ready To Start”, revealing the entire stage as an oversized TGI Fridays, and the band clothed in candy-striper/waiter influenced business suits (get Marc Jacobs on the phone, stat!). Pretty great, huh? But we’re just getting started.
No spectacular concert would be complete without a costume change, so when you get to the epic two-part “Sprawl” songs that close out the album (but provide the center point of the show), that’s when the corporate-commercial motif goes by the wayside, and you shift gears to the Childlike Hopefulness section. Dive backstage, and come out bedecked in Land’s End from head to toe: shorts, polos, sweaters, the works! This would be a good time to bring out a classic song, like “Keep The Car Running.” Bring out the band from The Woodlands High School for good measure to add that extra pomp.
Of course, you have to close with “Wake Up”; we’re writing it into the contract, because that song is preposterously good. I don’t care if it’s not off the new record, it’s one of the best rock songs of the last 20 years. Then flip the bird to the whole audience to bash in the idea that you really, really hate them after all, and then hop a plane back to Quebec.
---
It took me a listen or two to get past the vitriol directed at my hometown in The Suburbs; the musical beauty was always there, but the lyrical elegance took a bit longer to emerge for me. So rather than pen a piece rabidly defending Houston and its sprawl from the louche, snotty ex-pat, why not embrace it? As a city, we are what we are, and if that identity played a part in creating one of the year’s best albums, let’s hold our heads high and own it.
