It almost seems redundant to even continue my little ol' review of Wednesday night's Arcade Fire show when so many others have already done so[chromewaves, SHOT, 10:51am Toronto, Just Keep Bloggin', foxymoron, Ron Nurwisah, Boy Reporter, radioDan, The New Pollution, Dissolve Into Molecules, Zoilus, Torontoist] but oh well, here goes. So where I last left off was with Final Fantasy and friends performing a non-ironic version of Mariah Carey's "Fantasy", in the process inspiring some initial snickers in the audience but, in the end leaving us with a smile on our faces. Nice start to the evening.Next up were Montreal's Wolf Parade. The four young gents played an admirable set up psych-pop tunes, propelled by the the bouncy keyboard arrangements, the energetic rhythm section and the feverish lead vocals that alternated between the keyboardist and guitarist. When Win from Arcade Fire jumped down to the front of the stage to take in the set as a spectactor, that inspired a flood of people to take residence in front of the stage. Nice to see the crowd get into the performance. Initial impressions of Wolf Parade are good but nothing earth-shattering. Maybe Danforth Music Hall is too big of a venue for them. They'll be returning to Toronto for a show at the much smaller The Comfort Zone on June 11th, so maybe we should all go check 'em out again.
I hadn't seen The Arcade Fire live since last year's Olympic Island concert and in comparison I'm thinking that that performance was more inspired. The first time I actually saw The Arcade Fire live was back in October 2003 at the Pop Montreal festival. My initial reactions to The Arcade Fire were totally guttural; how their tunes immediately grabbed me, how their live show impressed upon me a feeling of giddiness. Wednesday night's show was good but I was hoping for more of a mind-blowing experience, and from what I've read, Tuesday night's show was the place to be(what with three encores and the band ending the night marching out down the aisle into the street). Moments of greatness did come in the form of the double-attack of "Neighborhood #3 (Power Out)" leading into "Rebellion (Lies)", Regine's lovely take on the samba-esque "Haiti", the propulsive "No Cars Go", and the great new song "Intervention". As usual, it was great to see the wacky physicality of the band on stage as members of the band practically assaulted each other: examples included the infamous tapping of helmets with drumsticks and one member of the band wrapping another member's head with a flag and tapping him on the chest with a drumstick. Owen Pallett got caught up in moments pawing at The Arcade Fire's Sarah and other times wrapping his arms around her tightly, seemingly lost in the emotion of the music. With all this going on, there were still between-song moments of silence(the band having not much to say between songs other the usual thank you's) that interrupted the flow of the evening. Still, when the band came back for a one song encore to perform a stirring rendition of "Wake Up", complete with audience participation in the form of pulling up a massive amount of spectactors on stage, you realize that there's only a handful of Canadian bands that could pull off such a stunt with confidence. [photos]
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