“What each member of the band does is not that important,” imparts press for New York-based band The National. I completely agree. By three minutes into their set, opening for The Arcade Fire (Thomas Wolfe Auditorium, Wednesday, May 2), I was so bored with them I kept forgetting to listen. Instead, I spent my time musing over the absurdity of the retiree-aged red-vested ushers who were limping from row to row showing high schoolers with expensively mussed hairdos to their seats. I also started a running tally of dads chaperoning teenaged daughters. My father, even at gun point, would never have attended any concert not involving John Denver.
Happily, Montreal rockers The Arcade Fire were a marked improvement from the opener. I’d been a bit worried since the band refused all interviews with the media after front man Win Butler underwent some sort of grizzly throat surgery. Being that he was unable to talk (or answer questions by email, or have another member of the band handle interviews) I wondered how he’d ever manage to face a microphone. Answer: quite well, thanks very much.
Indeed, The Arcade Fire performed like rock stars to a sold out crowd. Touring in support of their latest CD, Neon Bible, they brought an elaborate set with lots of neon lights and a symbolic bible suspended over the musicians. There was also a massive pipe organ and projections both on the backdrop and on smaller, suspended screens. Highly entertaining, as was the 10-person band including two fiddles, a stand up bass spray-painted silver, a hurdy gurdy, a clarinet, a sax, a tuba, and three seemingly-possessed percussionists who didn’t just play drums but pummeled their instruments into submission.
The Arcade Fire isn’t popular because of their originality, and I doubt they ever intended to rewrite rock. Instead, their sound is an amalgamation of all the best parts of New Wave with the 80s-genre’s synthesizers replaced by marching band instruments and the inanity replaced by politics. There’s a slickness to The Arcade Fire’s sound that’s carefully balanced by grit (much like the more-showered-than-indie-rock audience who, nonetheless, are not afraid of a little black nail polish). Similarly, the Bohemian trappings (girls in crinolines and combat boots, spastic guitar riffs) are tempered with almost do-woppy vocals. And then there’s Butler, a ring master in the midst of the dense sound and cinematic set, addressing the audience with surprising efficiency. “If you want to get closer to the stage,” he announced, “By all f*ckin’ means, come on down.”
–Alli Marshall, A&E reporter
Win actually had surgery on his sinus cavity, not his throat.