“The power’s out in the heart of man/ Take it from your heart/ Put it in your hand”
- the Arcade Fire, “Neighbourhood #3 (Power Out)
The thing about hype is, you gotta live up to it. Montreal art-rockers the Arcade Fire arrived for their beyond sold-out gig at Lee’s Palace this past Friday on the trail of bucketfuls of spilled ink extolling the virtues of their debut full-length, Funeral. Album of the year, they say. One of the best live acts around, chime in others.
It took me some time to come around. Saw them a few times, found their first EP sufficiently charming, but couldn’t quite understand the fervor some people seemed to have for this band. It finally clicked during their delightfully unhinged performance at Guelph’s Hillside Festival this summer, and by the time the jaw-droppingly good Funeral came out a few weeks ago, I was converted.
And yet, the buzz surrounding the Arcade Fire is so deafening right now that it’s almost forcing even the die-hard believers to cover their ears and wince a bit. So there were likely a lot of indie kids crossing their fingers at Lee’s hoping their new heroes would show the cynics.
It would be nice to be able to say that the six-piece blew the room away from the very moment they took the stage in their natty uniforms, but it took the group a few songs to get comfortable, no thanks to an iffy sound mix that swamped the room with sludgy bass and drowned out frontman Win Butler’s distinctive yowl.
But once they got going, there was no stopping them. While the Arcade Fire is all about group dynamics-Butler’s guitar playing off wife Regine Chassagne’s accordian as violinist Sarah Neufled saws away madly-Butler is a kinetic performer, howling out each word, whether tortured (“Neighbourhood #4”) or fragile (“Crown of Love”) like he means every last one. Next to wife Regine Chassagne, they’re a study in contrasts-Butler a blond giant, Chassagne petite and brunette. It’s an interesting visual counterpoint for a band that deals in imagery, from their black-and-white stage clothes to the stark scenarios painted in their lyrics.
Chassagne isn’t much of a singer (Butler’s got an equally strange voice, but he’s able to do more with it than she can with her thin, reedy, almost off-key vocal style), but when she took center stage briefly for the calypso-tinged “Haiti”, it was as much of a highlight as it is on the album, Chassagne throwing her arms around theatrically and mock-shooting at the front rows of the audience. The band may have just recently replaced drummer Howard Bilerman, but they needn’t have looked very far-Chassagne proved a fine drummer in her own right, bashing away joyfully on a few tunes.
Their album may be called Funeral (the band lost several family members over the past year), and their songs filled with insecurities and shadows, but the Arcade Fire’s live incarnation is all about joy. From the soaring, full-band choruses to Richard Parry (a dead ringer for Napoleon Dynamite if there ever was one) smashing a tambourine against a marching band drum, by the time they ended their set with the driving power-pop manifesto of “Power Out”, it was impossible not to be utterly won over.
“Their songs are like anthems,” a friend commented. Indeed. Anthems of light flickering through the darkness, mini-operas masquerading as rock and roll songs. In short, music for our time.
