Monday marked the first night I would see Ben show up for the concert series and with good reason! Arcade Fire was back in action! Exciting times! Last time I saw Arcade Fire was with Mike in Montreal back in 2005 for the Neon Bible tour. I was expecting a frenetic concert and I wasn’t disappointed.
We arrived in time to check out a little Sarah Harmer action. I’m not really familiar with her stuff but she had an excellent voice and some good tunes. We then headed over to see Alexisonfire (or as I like to call them -> Alex is on Fire) and watched them for 15 minutes. Ben said this was his first time even hearing about these guys which surprised the heck out of me. They were doing what they did best…screamo-rock which I find intriguing ever since Mike and I stopped in to see my sister in North Bay that one night and they had this one guy whose only job was to scream into the mic!
The crowd was pretty heavy on the grounds so we headed over to ‘the spot’ and settled in for the night. I managed to see my friend Mike with his friend Joel again. I swear we run into each other every day.
The Arcade Fire had a really interesting stage set up…they had what looked like an old drive-in theater sign up on stage which housed the video screen. The video effects were cool in that it wasn’t a straight video feed, but one that went through a variety of vintage looking effects. I enjoyed the subtle differences.
The band did not disappoint. We got a heavy dose of the new album ‘The Suburbs’ which is coming out in a few weeks. There were some tunes that didn’t do it for me upon first listen but there were others that made me go ‘Wow!’. I love it when a band can musically do that to a person upon first listen. Forget ‘liking the song only if I know it’. I want to experience it!
It seemed like the entire band was musically involved with the new songs compared to the older hits. The older hits allowed for some players to be more action-oriented on the stage (think the percussion players going around and banging on anything on the stage). The set list was a good mix of The Suburbs and Funeral, but was severely lacking from Neon Bible which is a shame. But I must admit that Funeral still trumps Neon Bible in my opinion so maybe they just don’t care to play a lot of the Neon Bible tunes live anymore since they have a new album to play.
I give the show two enthusiastic thumbs up. If you have never seen Arcade Fire before, I’m sure the following comments will come from your mouth: “I can’t believe how many members there are!”, “What the heck is that percussion player doing?!”, “The energy from the band and the crowd is amazing!”
On a related note, when the Arcade Fire left the stage, supposedly they heard the Dubé Brothers rocking out on the street corner and went to check out these pint-sized professionals rip into Sweet Child o’ Mine. There’s a video of them checking the band out on Youtube somewhere and it’s pretty awesome. The Dubé Brothers are these ten year olds that put my guitar playing to shame. I almost feel like I was watching the Jackson 5 playing on the street because their Dad was in the back managing the sound levels and giving them encouragement. 😉
Setlist:
Ready to Start
Month of May
Neighbourhood #1 (Tunnels)
Neighbourhood #2 (Laika)
No Cars Go
Haiti
Empty Room
Rococo
Crown of Love
Suburban War
Keep the Car Running
We Used to Wait
Neighbourhood #3 (Power Out)
Rebellion (Lies)
Encore
Happy Birthday
Intervention
Wake Up