If there’s one thing you can say about Arcade Fire, above all else, it’s that they know how to construct an album. The Suburbs, which entered the Billboard Top 200 albums chart at No. 1, is less an album and more a symphony, with interludes, songs divided into parts I and II, and repeating themes. Oh, and the music is damn good, too.

Given the band’s propensity for making statements with their music, the title “The Suburbs” should immediately give you an idea of what you’re in for. The message of husband-wife duo Win Butler and Régine Chassagne isn’t hidden in these lyrics; they’re sung out loud and unabashed, determined to warn us of the impending loss of our freedom as we resign ourselves to punching the clock and living behind our white picket fences.

In “Sprawl II” (one of a few multi-part songs on the album), Régine sings “They heard me singing and they told me to stop, quit these pretentious things and just punch the clock”, and repeats through the chorus, “Dead shopping malls rise like mountains beyond mountains, and there’s no end in sight, I need the darkness someone please cut the lights.” These images of the wasteland of the suburbs, darkness and light, freedom and the search for the place where we belong are the spine of this album. But the message isn’t to avoid this next stage in life at all costs: in the title track, Butler asks “So can you understand/Why I want a daughter while I’m still young/I wanna hold her hand/And show her some beauty/Before this damage is done.”

The tension in the lyrics between having to grow up and “fit in” and trying to avoid becoming “wasted” come through in the music as well. As the first track (“The Suburbs”) begins, the swinging beat and piano sound almost jaunty, and even in the desolation of “Sprawl II”, the melody rises and falls, ending each line with a pleasant major resolve.

But at times throughout the album, the melody will fall to a cold minor tune…a mirror of the idea that no matter what suburban life might look like on the surface, there’s a different story going on underneath. These major and minor tensions keep you on edge for the entire album and kick you every time you start to get comfortable, until finally you reach the reprise of “The Suburbs” and hear a defeated echo of the opening melody.

So, it’s not exactly easy listening, but the intricacies of this album will draw you in and keep you playing it on a loop. It’s difficult to top the award-winning predecessors Funeral and Neon Bible, but The Suburbs does come close to doing so.

Make sure you check out Arcade Fire’s newly released ultra inventive viral video for The Suburbs single, ”We Used To Wait.” (If you don’t have Google Chrome, take a minute of your time to download it and welcome to the future.) The band will be making a short trip down the west coast of the U.S. in October, so be sure to catch them at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles on Oct. 7th and 8th!