Like most bands, Arcade Fire have a handful of good songs: Neighborhood #3 (Power Out), No Cars Go, Haiti, Keep the Car Running, The Well and the Lighthouse (based on my iTunes ratings, which tend to correspond to immediately catchy songs).
But hell, plenty of other buzzbands have a pile of even better songs. So while I'm not going to say they suck in the way that lots of the hyped bands of the early 2000s who were terrible and had no redeeming value whatsoever, I really don't get the attention.
Also, I saw them live with another Now band, LCD Soundsystem, at Red Rocks. I thought they were terrible live. The music had no pizzazz. Meanwhile LCD Soundsystem were great. My friends all thought differently.
On topic, I think Halcyon Digest was really good. Deerhunter are very good. And about half of the songs on the recent/last album by the aforementioned LCD Soundsystem are also very good.
I was going to rebuke this board because no one has mentioned Sacrificium: the Music of the Castrati by Cecilia Bartoli, but apparently that came out last year so I'll just check that thread.
