Album: Arcade Fire

On 2005's Funeral, Arcade Fire used personal tragedies as the inspiration for songs on the inevitability of ageing and death. Here, the inspiration is the wider unease about the political momentum of our era, the way the dividends of peace seem farther away than during the Cold War. It's Songs of Post-Millennial Dread from the Time of Terrorism, with Win Butler in apocalyptic mood, visualising "a great black wave in the middle of the sea", and anticipating a time when "all the words will lose their meaning" and "every spark of friendship and love will die". "Windowsill" and the Springsteen-esque "(Antichrist Television Blues)" find him haunted by the prospect of further September 11-style attacks, afraid to live in America, ashamed at Western complicity in the new crusade. "You can't forgive what you can't forget," he sings, a proposition inverted in the closing song to "Just because you've forgotten doesn't mean you're forgiven" - a dialectic wrestled with throughout the album against thrumming bouzoukis, violins and hurdy-gurdy played with the rugged fervour of rockabilly. An extraordinary entertainment.

DOWNLOAD THIS: 'Keep the Car Running', 'No Cars Go', 'Windowsill', 'Intervention'