Seeing the Arcade Fire on Friday was exhausting; I was on my feet from 9 pm to roughly 2:15 am. I even got pretty tired and closed my eyes during two slower songs from Canadian openers Hidden Cameras, who were goofily, enthusiastically entertaining, though I'm not sure I'd ever enjoy sitting down and listening to them on CD. But then I caught my second wind, and it was tough NOT to be wired throughout the entirety of the Arcade Fire set. My first reaction: wow.


Richard Parry. Indeed.

Their debut album has had a ton of buzz--well, at least from pretentious media sources, who seem to be chomping at the bit to name it album of the year. The show at TT's sold out weeks in advance, which is pretty bizarre and I wound up having to scalp well north of the $10 face value, but who cares. This was the place to be if you use your musical taste as a weapon of intellectual elitism...lots of horn-rimmed glasses and cheeky vintage t-shirts. In protest I wore my most token-looking social conformist shirt--my blue and dark blue Gap rugby shirt, so there I was in the front row, looking like I had just dropped my weekly allowance at Old Navy. Boyakasha!


Regine Chassagne manages the crowd.

You really only need to look at the pictures from the show to understand the energy the band brings to the stage. Nina and I got there ridiculously early so for a packed crowd we couldn't have been more comfortable...standing between the amps at the front of the stage, with no annoying lateral dancers or jostlers.

On stage the sextet looks like a haphazardly assembled combination of rock stars looking like rock stars (frontman Win Butler), dorky kids dressed like rock stars (Regine Chassagne, Will Butler) and dorky kids looking like dorks (Richard Parry, Tim Kingsbury, plus the violinist chick and the Hidden Cameras' ueber-dork cellist who was sitting in). They're like a bunch of kids who were in orchestra together growing up, but it turned out all these years they'd been clamoring to unleash a rock album and they finally got the chance.


Win Butler.

The result was Funeral, an album inspired in both title and subject matter by the death of three of the band's family member in the past two years. But what makes it a terrific album is that it's not an album of dirges and retrospection; it's emotional, but in a redemptive and resurrective sense. And seeing the band live you get this sense that you're sharing something incredibly personal with them (and a few hundred other people). They opened with "Wake Up," my personal fave off the new album, with every band member--mic'ed up or not--shouting the intro at the top of their lungs.

Every permanent bandmember played multiple instruments while on the cramped stage, adding to the chaos and further undermining the usual rock band stasis of three guitarists and a drummer. The Butlers alternated on bass and guitar. Chassagne sang and also played keyboards, a steel drum, accordion, and ended on the set on drums. Parry played guitar, bass, keyboards, tambourine, accordion, and one of those single drums that colonial armies used to tote around. Kingsbury played drums before ending on bass. The only other band I've seen which had so many interchangeable parts was The Hidden Cameras, so I suppose it makes sense they were touring together.

Arcade Fire / Neighborhood #3 (Power Out)
The second-best song off perhaps the best album of the year.

Car Crash Show / Paper Bag
*Really* good band which opened the Arcade Fire show.

St. Etienne / Lose That Girl
Off the new St. Etienne compilation. Originally from 1998.