I bought an album the other day

I bought an album the other day. A new album by a contemporary group. Remember doing that? I'm sure some readers still do. Unfortunately, I listen to a lot of new stuff on Spotify these days and rarely buy CDs. My other source of new music, I'm proud to say, is of course bands associated with ROCK-TIL-YOU-DROP.

I often walk into record shops now and spend most of my time weighing up whether it is worth paying as little as three quid for a CD, when I can listen to it on Spotify. As for new releases at eight to ten quid, well, I had better go home and listen to it on Spotify before risking that sort of money! A sad state of affairs, really.

Anyway, as well as having my clothes fastidiously folded away Benetton-style, one of the perks of being married to my Californian wife is that most summers I get to visit the huge second-hand record shop that is Amoeba Records in Berkeley. However, as much as I look forward to visiting it, even there I have trouble parting with a few bucks. This summer, though, I took a risk - a 10 dollar risk - on the new Arcade Fire CD.

Now, I am one of those music fans who is wary of bands that are hip and happening and that are on the cover of the NME, and in the process I often miss boats containing bands like the Smiths and Arctic Monkeys. I then get into them when the media hype has died down, or they are in fact history. And when everyone seemed to be going ga-ga over Arcade Fire, I made a point of not listening to Arcade Fire. I can be so contrary.

The other thing is, I read music magazines about as often as I go to WHSmiths at Heathrow's Terminal 3, which is about as often as I go to the US. As a result, I'm easily impressed by a good record review, and ultra- suggestible. So on this trip I bought my annual copies of Mojo and Q, and in both I read a good review of Arcade Fire's new album. I then come across the CD in Amoeba in Berkeley and, as I said, I decide I will risk taking the word of a couple fo music magazine journalists, whose opinions I don't value and names I can't remember.

The album is entitled 'The Suburbs'. It is not conceptual but it does have a theme running though it about growing up in the 'burbs. This is a subject, their singer tells me on US radio, that is somewhat taboo in rock songs. Not mine, so maybe I relate, and that is part of the reason I buy.

It comes in a nice digipak with a glossy gatefold cover. Inside is also a booklet of lyrics. Self-consciously scribbled so as to be hard to follow, which is annoying, but lyrics to read all the same. Just like the old days.

We do a lot of driving in California as you might expect, but I quite enjoy it because like the music magazines, and trips to WHSmiths Heathrow and Amoeba Records Berkeley, I only do it about once a year. I like the right hand side of the road too, now. And being automatic, the cars out there are like big toys.

Anyway, we (my wife and daughter and I) make a point of taking my new album on every journey. We listen to the whole thing, which incidentally is a little long, but I know I like it from the word go. It's cohesive. It's dreamy and romantic without being wet and Coldplay. It's rocky US indie without being too REM. It has a full sound, a well-produced sound, it's clearly guitar driven and the songs' narratives and the overall sound are at times a little Springsteen-ish, without being too Springsteen-esque. We play it over and over. Track one and two begin to take, and we skip around a bit to expedite the process of enlightenment, and then before you know it, we are listening to the songs in between, and the album in its entirety. And of course it is the best, as well as the only, new album I've heard in a while.

It also inspires a guitar riff, which I realise on my sister-in-law's acoustic, and I begin working on my second song of the holiday. This keeps me out of the in-laws' hair.

So, if you haven't tried buying a new album by a contemporary band recently, do. It might just be worth every penny.