The Suburbs

Recorded between 2008 and 2010 at Petite Eglise in Farnham, the Magic Shop in New York, Studio Frisson in Montreal, Public Hi-Fi in Austin and the Montreal home of Butler and Chassagne. Craig Silvey mixed it, with additional mixing by Nick Launay, and Owen Pallett arranged the strings. Butler said the album is neither a love letter to the suburbs nor an indictment of them, but a letter from the suburbs. The lyrics draw on the band's upbringing in The Woodlands, Texas. The deluxe edition adds Culture War and Speaking in Tongues, which features David Byrne.

It was released on 2 August 2010 in the UK and 3 August in the US and Canada, engineered by Marcus Paquin, and issued with eight different covers. Pitchfork's Ian Cohen compared its generous pacing to Bruce Springsteen's The River rather than to a sprawling statement album, and heard "Rococo" as a skewering of the hipster who follows trends. The deluxe edition added the Spike Jonze short film Scenes from the Suburbs, which runs 30 minutes and debuted at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2011.

Reception

It debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 and in Canada, the UK and Ireland, among other countries. It is certified triple platinum in Canada and platinum in the UK and Ireland.

Metacritic scored it 87 from 43 reviews. Pitchfork's Ian Cohen called it a satisfying return to form, BBC Music's Mike Diver found it the band's most thrillingly engrossing chapter yet, and Q said they may have delivered their masterpiece. It won Album of the Year at the 53rd Grammys in February 2011, the 2011 Brit for International Album, the Juno for Album of the Year and the Polaris Prize in September 2011. Exclaim! named it the best album of 2010.

The US first week was 156,000 units, and two weeks after the Grammy win the album climbed from number 52 to number 12 on the Billboard 200. It also won the Brit for International Group and, at the 2011 Junos, Group of the Year, Songwriter of the Year, Album of the Year and Alternative Album of the Year. The band streamed their 5 August 2010 Madison Square Garden show on YouTube, with a video directed by Terry Gilliam. With Google and Chris Milk they released The Wilderness Downtown, an interactive video for "We Used to Wait". They appeared on Saturday Night Live on 13 November 2010.