"Rock and roll," says Robert Christgau,  "has produced a surprising bounty of old men with something to say. Leonard Cohen fits this paradigm, with two significant differences. The first is that he's rock and roll only by association. He's really a Gallic chansonnier, in it for the lyrics rather than the liberating musical intensity even Dylan has made a vocation. The second is that he was always old -- older than Elvis and also more sophisticated, the kind of artist you'd look up to at 24 only to find yourself surprisingly, alarmingly entering his age group four decades later."

"Their goal is to make old structures of feeling signify anew," wrote Robert Christgau last summer about Arcade Fire and their album The Suburbs. Sunday night the record picked up the Grammy for Album of the Year.  In "Maturity for Modern Kids"  Robert Christgau gives his take on why this "exceptionally principled" Montreal band is also capable of getting a jaded crowd to reach for the sky.