The Arcade Fire debuted their new album in Toronto, Canada over the weekend in intimate theatre shows which were announced with 48 hours notice. Reviews of the shows suggest that they’ve discarded the grandeur of 2007’s Neon Bible and are now getting down and dirty with a bit of a pop punk sound. They only played three songs off Neon Bible, instead playing seven songs off the new album The Suburbs and delving back in to their first album for the remainder of the set.

They’ve also ditched the Edward Hopper meets the Amish look they’d been strutting around in for the Neon Bible tour and are looking decidedly like Band of Horses in their plaid shirts and jeans. The band have also continued the drip feed of new songs from the album by releasing two songs to radio.

First US single ‘Ready To Start’ is available here and first UK single ‘We Used To Wait’ is available here. This album is shaping up to be their The Joshua Tree, the album that turned U2 into a stadium band in America in 1987. The Suburbs is out worldwide on August 2nd, released on Spunk in Australia.