I’m not going to lie, it’s not a short flight from Vancouver to Auckland, particularly when you’re enroute to Brisbane enroute to Hamilton Island enroute to Lindeman Island. Needless to say, I had a bit of time on my hands and discovered this song by Canadian band (and fellow Springsteen fans) The Arcade Fire called The Suburbs. Some songs take a few listens to get under your skin, but not this one.

Despite the fact it is a long ballad, I was hooked from the first sound of the piano, the fat 60s-style bass (not “phat” as such) and the addictive shuffling of the drums. And then there is the melancholy of the lyrics, melody and vocals and it’s already one of my favourite songs of the year. Having listened to it probably 27 times in just three days, for the rest of my life when I return to it there will be that powerful thing that music can do in that I will be straight back to the time and place I was when I first heard it.

That said, that time and place was on an Air New Zealand long haul flight, but the food was good and I was lucky enough to have an exit-row seat so I didn’t get sore knees. But more significantly, it’s a transportation as much to the time and place, as to the feeling of that time and place. And that was a feeling – as heightened by the mentioned melancholy of the song – of knowing life was yet again changing.

Here it is, check it out, one of my best picks for the year that nearly was, The Suburbs by The Arcade Fire.