The Suburbs - Or, How Win Butler Betrayed Us Kids

Arcade Fire's Funeral seemed a work of divine majesty. I was young - 17 to be exact - and I can attest that the album by a motley band of Montrealers did for me what Sgt. Peppers did for my parents. It is definitional of my adolescent experience, and the adolescent experience of many of my friends and classmates. During my senior year of high school, I really only listened to Funeral and Alligator by The National (a band I am sure we will get to another time. So I wanted to start my criticism of what came after Funeral by noting that no matter what Win Butler does, I will still love and respect his first album. That may be understating it, Funeral is a fundamental text of my life.
So what the hell happened? I am going to skip Neon Bible, a piece of shoddy lyrical craftsmanship that would only raise my ire to speak about. Instead I want to focus on the latest album, The Suburbs, which has moments that verge on a return to form, but of course this all comes at a price, one that is paid in the first five songs. A close reading of the text might be in order here, so I'll refer you to the fourth song, Rococo.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=az_2oiccZNo

Here are the lyrics:

Let's go downtown and watch the modern kids
Let's go downtown and talk to the modern kids
They will eat right out of your hand
Using great big words that they don't understand
They say

Rococo, rococo, rococo, rococo
Rococo, rococo, rococo, rococo

They build it up just to burn it back down
They build it up just to burn it back down
The wind is blowing all the ashes around
Oh my dear god what is that horrible song they're singing

Rococo, rococo, rococo, rococo
Rococo, rococo, rococo, rococo
Rococo, rococo, rococo, rococo
Rococo, rococo, rococo, rococo
Rococo, rococo!
Rococo!

They seem wild but they are so tame
They seem wild but they are so tame
They're moving towards you with their colors all the same
They want to own you but they don't know what game they're playing



This coming from our supposed champion, who argued that "Us Kids Know" - that contrary to the given wisdom of our fathers we in fact held "the light" that was so bravely searched for in the cold dark night (listen to No Cars Go and Power Out again to see what I mean).
Perhaps, as Butler suggests ad nauseam throughout The Suburbs, he is "past the feeling", so that the kids he identified with are nothing but superficial sheep who follow his every word. There seem to me to be two issues with this position, each of which I'll deal with.
Firstly, it is unclear what reason he has to lose faith in youth. Is it merely age? Now that he has grown older, gone on massive worldwide tours, made more money than is imaginable, he sees through the masks that he once wore as a child? If anything, it was his earnestness that propelled Funeral, and I would defend that album to the last that it is an honest statement of emotion. Perhaps Butler disagrees, but if that's the case it isn't clear that his position now is any more tenable (or any less fake) then the one he previously inhabited. And that previous position lead him to being an incredibly successful rock star, so it is a little hard to see why he'd harbor such distain for the world-view he came from.
Secondly, so what if the kids hide behind masks and use words they don't understand? That's what being a teenager is - trying on identities, using words and actions to mask the fact that you don't quite know who you are and the fear that someone will figure out your ruse. Butler appears to be damning such a position in Rococo, but for what? What does calling out this very normal aspect of adolescence actually do, other than shame the very kids who buy his album (and make it #1), and shame them unreasonably? Yes, we have a tendency as young adults to see our actions as "wild" - as counter to normativity, as expressions of our inner, wilder senses - and as we grow older we see that youthful rebellion is merely that, something "tame." But again, what is the problem with that? Does Butler look down on us because we do not go far enough? Or is it because we trade in self-deceit? If it's the former, he suffers from unbearable pretension. If it is the latter, he has forgotten what it means to be young.
Butler uses the term Rococo in a twofold sense. One, it is the term the modern kids chant - presumably the term they don't understand - because it sounds smart, makes them sound assured, etc. But of course, their opinions on the world are rococo themselves - overly ornate while lacking any emotional or intellectual import. But Butler himself forgets that the Rococo period also had great acts of culture and the like - consider Montesquieu who was deeply embedded in his cultural milieu, in the middle of Rococo. To criticize youth by arguing that its projects are complex and pretty but ultimately empty is to forget the passion that youth has. Perhaps that passion is now and again misdirected, but the fact that it exists is admirable. Yes, the modern kids might not know what they are saying, but they'll figure it out, that's what happens when you grow up. You might become hardened, but that doesn't mean that whatever passion you once had somehow evaporates, though sadly this does appear to be the case for Win Butler. His past two projects have been extended rages against the establishment and the modern world (which, as I recall, has treated him fairly well), angst and hatred without any hint of the emotional core of Funeral. His work has in fact been sound and fury signifying nothing, which seems definitional of the Rococo that he suggests "the kids" flout as they hang in record stores or coffee shops downtown.