Track 10 on Arcade Fire’s The Suburbs, ‘Month of May,’ feels like a cigarette break from all of the moody foreboding of the rest of the album. Maybe not a cigarette, maybe a shot.

This is a pulsating punk tune that feels a bit out of place on the album, musically, though lyrically it hits on many of the same themes.

Win Butler writes about the city being hit from above and describes a violent wind that “blew the wires away.” He could be describing an actual storm but this also sounds like more fallout from that metaphoric suburban war he’s been describing.

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