The Suburbs: Nostalgia and Novelty

 

Pop Montreal’s Art Pop brings the nostalgia-tinged art of Arcade Fire’s The Suburbs to Mile End. The exhibition, entitled The Art of ‘The Suburbs,‘ features objects, sketchbooks and digital images related to the Grammy-winning album, recognized not only in the category for Best Album but also for its innovative and interactive design, which raised the bar for digital packaging.

The band lamented that downloading music had taken away the pleasure of the album covers and inserted pamphlets that provided visuals for an album of songs. By developing both a physical booklet as well as a digital one, Arcade Fire was able to sync imagery with its music in a new way. Through the digital format, songs are linked to specific images, words (especially handwritten lyrics) and hyperlinks that correlate with moments in each song.

The creative team responsible for this award-winning digital art concept is Caroline Robert, Vincent Morisset and Gabriel Jones. Morisset and Robert have collaborated on a number of projects together and had already worked with the band. However, the art for The Suburbs was the first time that Morisset and Robert were involved developing an aesthetic from the outset.

Between greeting well-wishers and attending to crises caused by unplugged projectors (damn those small children!), Morisset explained how the process began. “It was an ideal set up. We’d known the band a long time and were hanging out at the studio. We were involved in the process of the album, and the band was involved in the process of the art.”

Initially, the plan had been to take photographs from the front seat of a road-trip between Longueuil and Woodlands, Texas, Régine Chassagne and Win Butler’s respective hometowns. However, the uninspiring landscape led the artists to focus on the suburbs of Houston (including Woodlands), instead.

The exhibit includes the set used for the The Suburbs photo shoot, which made use of the forced perspective technique popular with films of the ‘50s and ‘60s. The beat-up 1979 Mercedes is positioned in front of the screen projecting generic suburban photographs, so attendees can hop into the car and shoot an interactive picture of their own.

No less interesting, though, are the cases containing sketchbooks, photographs, postcards and other curios related to the album’s meticulous and sensitive design. Everything seems carefully selected and considered and, most of all, meaningful.

For example, one of the band’s logos for the album features the letters A and F in a stylized diamond. The image is drawn from the American Amateur Radio League’s logo. Win and Will Butler’s grandfather was a ham (an amateur radio aficionado) who collected postcards from other hams worldwide to indicate they had connected over the airwaves.

The art pays homage to forms of communication that are slipping away, such as the handwritten letter. There is a sense of poignancy that personal, intimate connection is being replaced by public, mass distribution of information.

Of course, the artists involved in packaging the album make use of these new modes of communication (the Internet, digital image) to distribute these ideas. Only a small portion of Arcade Fire’s fanbase were alive before personal computers were commonplace and the digital revolution took hold. Most who embrace the message are remembering a time and a period of history they never even knew. ■

The Art of ‘The Suburbs’ is on display at Nomad Industries (129 Van Horne), 2 – 7 p.m., until Sept. 23.