There was a lot to love at Arcade Fires MSG concert last night, the songs were strong or weak but the playing was always captivating.
But how do you start a worldwide Internet simulcast late?
I mean keeping 16,000 people waiting is one thing, t keeping the world on hold is not merely dodgy career wise, it is also hubristic to the nth degree and quite in keeping with the Arcade Fire I’ve been claiming all week are hiding in plain sight behind the blatantly fake charm offensive.
Perhaps Wim is upset because the 400s section seats are empty and the 300s section seats are wide open.
There is a screen above the band and it is projecting Terry Gilliam’s internet directed stream. I will check it out online at some point but from this distance it is all band fades and videos merging. Alright, not mind boggling.
AF opens very strong and if the first two songs -neither faves, are an indication these guys have something to strut about and nobody is going to complain about the wait for long. The stage is jammed and the pace pretty relentless. They come across like a Canadian Los Campasinos – a musical collective in thrall to their sound. The five voice strong harmonies saves another song I don’t much care for “No Cars Go”and takes it into a sorta musical Calliope. And while they fall to earth very shortly after, they never fall beneath the earth.
I would love to hate AF… They are so fucking pretentious and overblown and smug. But this is undeniable. What they are doing to this brace of songs is surreal: the band are wringing em out and batting them out and playing em out.
Even when the songs don’t click, “The Suburbs” is a surprisingly off moment, the sound and the inness of the moment saves em. Perhaps AF can’t deal with quiet, and they play so loud the song is verging on distortion. Or maybe “The Suburbs” is a big theme seen locally and it doesn’t work so well with the big bam boom.
When the songs aren’t working, they perform a poignant and always sophomoric “Intervention”, the sentiments are pathetic. The new songs work even less well with only “Month Of May” managing to take off, everything else from “Rococo” to “The Suburbs” fails to improve on the recorded version or even equal it.
Around an hour in and after a pretty useless wade through the audience (so Wim can say Taylor Swift outdid him no doubt) the band get their mojo back with a towering “Neighborhood Power Out”, one of the great musical moments of the year.
“Rebellion (Lies)” may be better, the first singalong of the night (as predicted) and finally AF get to join their audience the way Bruce does all the time, the only real excuse for musical bombast.
Arcade Fire switch the song line up from yesterday and end the set proper with a propelled “Keep The Car Running”.
During the penultimate number of the encore “Scrawl 2 Mountain Beyond Mountain” the drum machine stalls. Nice, human size, right? The loathsome Butler says how live the music is and before starting it again adds “This is a great song and you will tell your kids about the time you heard Arcade Fire screw up and how it was the most awesome moment of your life.”
And that says it all about this buncha great, lumbering, musically overwhelming, stupid brats.