11.05.07

It’s not for the cock, it’s for the Halloween special

Posted in Uncategorized at 11:53 pm by Gavin Williams

Arcade Fire - Nottingham Ice Arena- 31/10/2007

If the summer festivals in the UK were among Arcade Fire’s most triumphant gigs (with Glastonbury being the crowning moment) then tonight at the Nottingham Arena, it suddenly becomes clear just how much this band has grown- even since the start of the year. Here are thousands of people, many of whom are, naturally for an Arena gig, the sort who buy a couple of Best Ofs a year and believe cutting edge music to come from the Joe Whiley show, who have forked out £23 to see a Canadian collective of misfits slightly out of sync with modern popular culture.

Excitement grows and anyone who wants a beer or needs the toilet is stranded until the end as a screen on the stage starts flickering with some sort of righteous political speaker. On each side of the stage, other screens start blaring out similar footage of these irate activists until they all overlap each other and you can’t make out the words so much as hear a unrelenting string of angry tones. Suddenly, the opening notes of Black Mirror break out and the band come on to the stage wearing Halloween masks and costumes. Win Butler is dressed as a large, hulking surgeon whilst other members of the band wear creepy masks, blood face paint and torn, blood splattered shirts. With the sinister, brooding feel of Black Mirror building up, the atmosphere is electric.

The band, as always, are an excellent live act that demand wide eyed enthusiasm and attention. With so much happening onstage, there’s never a point with nothing to attract the audience’s attention: On the left of the stage, the two percussionists are jumping around, making a beat by hitting anything in sight- be it amplifier, drum, motorcycle helmet or the floor. The band constantly swap instruments, often half way through a song, to the point where you realise that someone who you saw manically smacking the glockenspiel a minute ago is now calmly playing a cello on the other side of the stage.

After heart wrenching, full throttle work outs of the anthemic ”No Cars Go” and the uncoiling “Laika”,  Butler strums the opening chords to “(Antichrist Television Blues)” and mutters “The truth is scarier than fiction” and as the rest of the band kick into the song, it’s quite clear that this is one of the most important men in music right now and his band are surely the best in the world. As the song finishes, Butler marks the sign of the cross on his chest and after singing lines such as “I’m a God fearing man” and “Please tell me God, am I an antichrist” the scene is quite powerful and stirring.

In between songs, tonight, Butler seems mildly anxious of the crowds enjoyment, asking “You having a good time? You seem awfully queite out there”, but soon this is broken off by whirring sirens and moaning, echoing bleeps which in turn are punctured by the loud pounding drums of “Haiti”. The song is epic and beautiful, quiet unlike anything else by the band. Regine Chassagne’s delivery of the song is fantastic and completely mesmerising: toying her persona between moody toddler and flirtatious teenager and reaching each note perfectly.

During the industrial dancey rock work out of “Power Out”,  the crowd lap up Butler’s almost falsetto vocals and dizzy guitar strumming as the song works its way to the climax. Suddenly, Win Butler’s guitar is flung to the floor and he is bending into the crowd with both middle fingers raised. As the front section of the crowd suddenly stop dancing and look around in shock, it becomes apparent that the singer has been hit by a hurled object of some nature. The band carry on with as much hesitancy and surprise as the audience. After venting his obvious anger with comments like “Where are you, you fucker”, Butler walks offstage- cagily followed by the rest of Arcade Fire. The crowd look at each other in apprehension. but mostly for that person who can only be described as, in all fairness, an utter fucking prick.

However, the band come back on and play “Rebellion (lies)”, but what should be the crowing moment, the lap of honour, is tainted by what has just happened. The crowd start to warm up again, but it’s still hard to shake off the disappointment of how such an amazing gig has had its epic atmosphere punctured.  During the closer “Wake Up”, Butler spends the whole of the song deep within the crowd as a genuinely euphoric wave crashes throughout the arena.

Tonight, Arcade Fire have been utterly fantastic- powerful and epic, but never overly theatrical-whilst showing their great range of talents to great effect. It’s just highly unfortunate that the band themselves, and possibly some within the audience, will remember this for one incident alone by that one person who thought it a pretty good idea to pay £23 to see a band they wanted to throw stuff at.  

(Antichrist Television Blues)

Rebellion (lies) 

Neighborhood#2 (Laika)

 www.myspace.com/arcadefire

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