You may remember that I recently bought Arcade Fire tickets on a whim. I never did end up selling it because I found some friends to go see the show with. Peter, Dave and I went to the show last night, and unfortunately Rachel had to cancel at the last minute because her experiment’s equipment failed. The show was at Massey Hall, which I had never been too, and was fortunately just across the street from Eaton Centre, because the skies had opened up and threatened to put Toronto under the sea better than any global warming could.

We got to our seats at about 8pm, in time to catch the last 10 minutes of the opening act whose name I can never remember (The Handsome Furs btw). Much like their name, they were forgettable. The roadies then tore down and setup the Arcade Fire’s equipment and they came on at about 8:30. Here is the set list from what I can remember (pretty accurate I think, since for once I knew all the songs of the band I was seeing):

Set list
Black Mirror
Keep The Car Running
(Antichrist Television Blues)
No Cars Go
Haiti (not sure about this one…)

Neighborhood #2 (Laika)
Intervention
Neon Bible
My Body Is A Cage
Windowsill
The Well And The Lighthouse
Neighborhood #3 (Power Out)
Rebellion (Lies)

Encore #1
Ocean of Noise
Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)

Encore #2
In The Backseat

I wanted to see The Arcade Fire for two reasons: 1) they were supposed to have an amazing live show, and 2) the tickets are hard to get (see reason #1). They disappointed me in that they weren’t actually that lively and vibrant, and I spent some time wondering why that was the case. It could have been our seats, we were seated above and directly to the left of the stage; not the best seats (they said it was obstructed, but only the back of the stage was) and kind of far from the action. It could have been the fans. After the first song, Will Butler invited everyone down from their (theatre) seats so they could crowd around the stage; and many people did, but it wasn’t a tight crowd and there wasn’t a lot of energy. There were a couple of people bopping their heads and waving their arms (plus a groupie front and centre) but that was it! Disappointing. It could have also been because they was never any conversations with the crowd. They were pure business except for a brief commercial about supporting some charity movement. I couldn’t hear his spoken word properly anyways.

It could be that the songs from their second album aren’t suited for high tempo craziness. I noticed that when they played songs from Neon Bible (including the horrible title track, why did they perform that??), they just stood in front of their mics playing their instruments. However, when they played their old stuff, random extraneous band members would jump around hitting drums, cymbals and random stage things (like a motorcycle helmet). The end of the original set (with Rebellion) and when they played Laika right before going into a couple of slower songs were the best and most exciting. I wanted the entire concert to be like that!

Overlooking the lack of energy, and some sketchy song choices (hate In The Backseat, and Neon Bible), it was a worthwhile experience. I should’ve brought my camera gear and hung around in front of the stage, there were a bunch of photographers from their Canon L-series lenses and it didn’t look like they needed press passes to get the best seat in the house!

Posted by Kevin in Blogs Tags: concerts