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Arcade Fire
| Message Board > Show Reviews > Arcade Fire |
| wee User Info... |  | ||
| steve User Info... | that kind of sincerity and exuberance is rare anyone have more pics? - Tue, 14 Dec 2004 10:16am | ||
| J User Info... | yes... it is quite rare to see that kind of sincerity... so lets have someone that's not in the band do the review then? j/k.. wish i was there... but as it was said... SOLD OUT! :( next time - Tue, 14 Dec 2004 10:41am | ||
| LowBoy User Info... | A friend of mine has pics... maybe I can convince him to upload some or send me some. And damn, that was a fantastic show. It was the banging on the pipes + miscellaneous things that really got me stoked. Not that I wasn't already stoked to be seeing fucking Arcade Fire! - Tue, 14 Dec 2004 11:29am | ||
| 1st prize User Info... | I thought THIS was an interesting review, although a bit long and cynical, from someone at: http://www.livejournal.com/users/twoheaded_boy/29083.html The Arcade Fire: a verdict So, it was a good show. For having been together only a year or two, the Arcade Fire are really polished and mature, but they still retain an appealingly raw quality. Their sound is HUGE, anthemic -- that's what you get with seven people on stage, all singing. The result is a little like the Polyphonic Spree, though: one simple melody times seven (or thirty-six) is still one simple melody, just bigger (and, in the worst-case scenario, bloated). They're a passionate, energetic band with some really good hooks, but overall they're just too derivative and too conventional. They synthesize a lot of great sounds from a lot of great bands, but they don't take them anywhere new. They don't push any boundaries or break any new ground. Like Interpol, they stand in an irritating pose, with one foot planted in the underground and one foot poised over the mainstream, and they lose both ways; they miss out on the cred of being genuinely radical and/or independent and they're still never going to break into major sales in a Coldplay sort of way (even Wilco only just made Gold record status for Yankee Hotel Foxtrot last week). Which is not to say that they couldn't become really, really popular -- for an indie-rock band. Judging by the ecstatic sold-out crowd, these guys are poised for a pretty meteoric rise. Another thing that kind of bothers me about them is how they come off as really earnest and emotional and honest, but there's no self-awareness about their image. Their lead singer (Win Butler) kind of reminded me of Jack White, with his I'm-so-authentic attitude, lamenting the loss of "realness" in music, but totally ready to look tortured for a magazine cover (though I'll admit that that's an unfair judgement as, to my knowledge, Win Butler has never been on a magazine cover). If they want to be torchbearers for emotional integrity, they need to be less morally lazy: a bunch of indie rockers crying on each others shoulders about all the pain in the world is just not an emotionally deep, mature, or inspiring response to...well, all the pain in the world. As a more admirable model, I would present a band like Q and Not U, whose stage presence is really sassy and cocky and fun -- they don't need to look serious all the time (or sound serious, even), because they are and it comes out in other ways: their songs are fully informed by a sense of community unity, radical politics, restless musical invention, and intellectual rigour. I think if you're really serious about your music, you shouldn't take yourself so seriously. The Arcade Fire's best moment, in this respect, is on tunes like "Rebellion (Lies)" where they channel Bruce Springsteen via The Constantines and hit on sort of a working-class universality that genuinely expresses the feeling of shared human experience that I think they're aiming at. Actually, considering that Q and Not U and the Arcade Fire don't have much in common, musically, maybe Architecture in Helsinki is a better example: they're breezy and fun and they make their 12 members seem like one, the opposite of the Arcade Fire's overwrought angst. Or, closer to home, Broken Social Scene -- less lyrically involved, but they use all those members to really extend their songwriting in interesting new directions. Their encore cover of the Talking Heads' "This Must Be the Place" was also accomplished (the steel drums were particularly awesome) and since Butler's doing a pretty good David Byrne impression even on his own songs, "This must Be the Place" lent itself to his pipes, but it also brought out the fact that, next to a behemoth of genius like early-80's Talking Heads, the Arcade Fire are rank amateurs. They walked over the track a little heavily and demonstrated, unfortunately, that the kind of subtlety mastered by David Byrne's songwriting is, as yet, out of their reach. Their worst flaw is just laying it on too thick. Do you really need that swooning violin all the time, guys? - Tue, 14 Dec 2004 9:20pm | ||
| Lucky Bar User Info... | Hey... We'd love to get some pics of the show for our website... can Wee or anyone else that might have some email them to [email protected]? If we use the photos we'll credit them to whoever took them. - Tue, 14 Dec 2004 11:23pm | ||
| [+} User Info... | great review reposting - 1st prize. - Wed, 15 Dec 2004 3:56pm | ||
| Mi*coll* User Info... | to that on-the-money review i'd add that they put on a good show but they're no They Shoot Horses Don't They? - Thu, 16 Dec 2004 1:34pm | ||
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