Arcade Fire left behind the spare experimentalism of its first EP a long time ago. And, caught somewhere between the underground and the stratosphere, its music contains a hint of melancholy. “All my old friends, they don’t know me now,” Butler sings on “Suburban War,” from The Suburbs. When you blow up, he seems to be telling us, you learn to say goodbye.

If you happen to visit Montreal, here are some things to do. You could get vegetarian food at Le Cagibi, where members of Arcade Fire used to hang out, back when it was still called Pharmacie Esperanza. You could get a pint at Casa del Popolo, a bar and music venue co-owned by a member of Godspeed You! Black Emperor, where Arcade Fire launched its first EP with a sold-out show. You could catch a concert at La Sala Rossa, located just across the street, where Arcade Fire once opened for Broken Social Scene and Royal City and almost broke up right onstage. You could get a coffee at Café Olimpico, where, even now, you might spot a sweaty Win Butler ducking in with a basketball under his arm. I offer this friendly tour because I think newcomers could use the help. When I first moved to Montreal, I registered my eighteen-year-old excitement about the local music scene on the now-defunct 20hz message board. I was quickly and mercilessly brought to heel by the site’s veterans, who accused me of colonizing the city with my froshie’s sense of entitlement. After living here for a few years, one of them told me, you’ll be one of us, and then you’ll understand why we hate you.

Like many Montrealers, Arcade Fire’s members are not actually from Montreal. Only Chassagne was raised in the city, while the others come from Ontario, British Columbia, and the US. The same is true of most of the city’s more recent successes — similarly named acts like Braids (Calgary), Grimes (Vancouver), and Suuns (pan-Canadian) — which says a lot about Montreal itself. It’s a place of considerable appeal for the young and the creative: far less expensive than New York, far more fun than Toronto or Vancouver, it glows with unambitious energy, a place where great things might happen, or might not.

Arcade Fire’s problem was that it never sounded as small as its city. Those anthems and those Rickenbackers, the Springsteen posturing and the roomy production — this is music meant to fill stadiums and festival fields, to reach listeners of both college and satellite radio. New York is a bottomless pit of history and aspiration; because you’ll never be greater than the city itself, you can’t possibly outgrow it. But anglophone Montreal is smaller and more parochial, its pulse easier to lay your finger on, which is also why so many young people from there leave for Toronto or Brooklyn or Beijing. At its root, the story of Arcade Fire’s success is also the story of growing too big for your environs.

In 2011, a decade after the band first formed, Montreal hasn’t quite lost its cool, but international attention has moved elsewhere (Portland, Baltimore, Akron), and few of its local peers have lasted. When Funeral was released in 2004, groups like the Unicorns, Wolf Parade, and the Stills were hot on their bigger sibling’s heels. None of them exist today; the fitful Unicorns imploded before they could explode, and Wolf Parade and the Stills both called it quits earlier this year.

Montreal has ably managed the slow transition away from buzz city status. Although it doesn’t hold the same vivid romance it once did for me, it has the steady, reliable hum of a viable art scene. Bands play as though they have little to prove, because they know what this place is capable of producing; and rather than imitating their forebears, local artists are committing to their own visions. Two of the city’s best recent exports are Colin Stetson (originally from Michigan) and Tune-Yards (originally from New England, now relocated to California). Stetson, who has opened for Arcade Fire, is an experimental saxophonist; while Tune-Yards, essentially the one-woman project of Merrill Garbus, is a beguiling fusion of Afropop and ukulele loops. Unlike Arcade Fire, they don’t play rock music at all, and their avant-gardism wilfully forestalls anything close to mainstream success. Montreal’s musicians are newly confident, but that doesn’t mean they want to win Grammys.

When I heard about Arcade Fire’s Grammy success, I didn’t feel much; not possessiveness, not scorn, not even mild surprise. It made sense that the band had won, because it is better than Lady Gaga or Eminem, its new peers. The vertical distance between the band and its listeners has increased exponentially over the past ten years; it will never again be an act for lofts or small folk festivals, because the world has finally caught up with its ambition. On its own terms, it became the twenty-first century’s first great “mindie” band — mainstream indie, a bit of blogosphere parlance that, in a less complex time, might have been oxymoronic. There are others — Animal Collective, the National, Broken Social Scene — but these acts do not partner with Google to create interactive online music videos, or team up with charities to aid in the reconstruction of post-earthquake Haiti. Corporate partnerships and earnest do-goodery are the hallmarks of a U2.

In late September, three days after The Suburbs won the Polaris Music Prize (a sort of Canadian anti-Grammy), Arcade Fire played a free outdoor show as part of the Pop Montreal music festival. About 100,000 fans swarmed a few square city blocks in downtown Montreal, drinking beer from plastic cups amid ubiquitous corporate signage. I had last seen the group five years earlier, playing to an audience a fraction of this size. A reverent crowd obscured the stage, but on the giant screens Butler, Chassagne, and the rest looked as if they were having fun.

During their last song, “Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains),” a cloud of giant, glowing balls was released upon the audience. Most people bounced the orbs around, but some, it seemed, clutched them as keepsakes. “If you’re holding on to a ball, you missed the purpose,” Butler admonished the crowd. “Throw it into the air. Share it with everyone.” Arcade Fire was our band before it was anyone else’s, but it was always too good to keep to ourselves.