Modern Minstrels

The Arcade Fire

I went to see The Arcade Fire with Nick, Eric, and Mike last Friday. I first discovered them through Nick's Song of the Week in September and got pretty hooked on No Cars Go. It was only recently that I had started listening to their album, Funeral (which was Pitchfork Media's Album of the Year). The music has an overall dark sound, and sometimes the "noise" and frantic pace draw you in and make you feel trapped like the characters in the songs.

Anyway, onto the show. The first opening act was actually one of the members of Arcade Fire doing a solo violin performance. It was overall pretty good. He had a sequencer that he would use to record various bits of what he was playing and layer them together in real time. Very Howie Day-esque. The second opener was some solo guitar act. I honestly don't think anyone in the audience was listening. You could pretty much just hear the crowd talking during his entire set. Then came The Arcade Fire, eight of them in all (2 guitars, bass, keyboard, drums, 2 violins, misc percussion). They played a pretty long set (I think all of Funeral and a few more songs). Lots of switching up on instruments between songs. I think my favorite song was Neighborhood #2 (Laika), in which 2 of the band members donned motorcycle helmets and proceeded to bang drum sticks on each other's heads and eventually get into a scuffle. The song is about someone's older brother that doesn't seem to get along with his family. The song became deeper and easier to understand once I googled "Laika" and learned that was a dog sent into space by the Russians and they had no intention of bringing it back. The song also contains one of my favorite lyrics: "If you want something don't ask for nothing, if you want nothing, don't ask for something". All in all it was a really fun show.

Make sure you check out their mp3s on Pure Volume.