NPR Streaming Arcade Fire’s The Suburbs

The new Arcade Fire album, The Suburbs, drops tomorrow, but you can preview it today on NPR Music. They’ve posted a full-album preview as part of their First Listen Series (you’ll also find new ones by Thou, Guillermo Klein, and more).

There’s some interesting info in NPR’s album summary. To wit:

Arcade Fire front man Win Butler began forming the ideas behind The Suburbs in 2009, after receiving a letter from an old friend from his boyhood home outside of Houston, Texas. “He sent us a picture of him with his daughter on his shoulders at the mall around the corner from where we lived,” says Butler. “And the combination of seeing this familiar place and seeing my friend with his child brought back a lot of feeling from that time. I found myself trying to remember the town that we grew up in and trying to retrace as much as I could remember.”

Read the rest, and get your listen on, here. And don’t miss YouTube’s webcast of the band’s MSG show, directed by film legend Terry Gilliam, this Thursday.