Arcade Fire Hackney Empire, London 7/7/10
5/5
By: Kevin Molloy
The Hackney Empire was the perfect choice for this envy-inspiringly small warm up show for the returning Arcade Fire. Not only does it feel like they're playing to their home crowd throughout (it feels hundreds of miles from the industry-quarter-friendly Shepherd's Bush Empire), but the magnificent venue allows the band to fully play up to the more theatrical elements of their set. The whole setting is more akin to a play than it is your typical gig - a massive on-stage construction of a billboard towers in front of the permanent backdrop of an overpass, the whole conjuring up some American baseball town (an evident but crucially un-clichéd nod to the upcoming album, The Suburbs). The billboard is wired up as a video panel for the band's visuals, but other than that the whole serves no practical purpose, other than to demand that the show is taken as a piece of theatre or art... it has the feel of a classic one-set production of a Tenessee Williams play.
And so it is that the anticipation is palpable at the Hackney Empire, as the adored indie darlings, the ones who actually manage to trouble the charts and radio with independent releases, return with what they themselves acknowledge as a warm-up for their new material and their upcoming festival run. The pertinent question, the one on the mind of each and every fan and industry-type in the room tonight, is just how those new songs are going to sound.
There's no waiting at all to find out - the band confidently kick off with 'Ready to Start', the second song from the forthcoming LP - a reminiscent slice of Funeral-era AF, with a melodic sensibility for pop music that gave them that kinship with The Shins, and a driving bass line moving it forwards. From there it's straight into 'Modern Man', track 3 on The Suburbs, a song that on first listen makes you worry that Win's tendency to come out with overly simplistic lyrics might have been indulged a little once more. The song draws you slowly in, though - oddly timed bright accents on occasional off-beats on the guitar pull against a steady but disorientating bass line, and the band themselves are barely contained static energy as they prowl the stage, letting the song out in bursts of motion entirely at odds with the gentle melodies they're portraying.
And then, with nary a word to the crowd as yet, the band burst forth into 'Laika', 'No Cars Go' and ‘Haiti’, and all of a sudden you remember just how many anthems they’ve made with just two LPs under their belt. The crowd, understandably, go absolutely nuts. As the intro to 'No Cars Go' kicks in every shout is sung back at the band, before 6 of the 8 members on stage simultaneously line up to their microphones across the front to bring in the main vocal (alongside the one-thousand-and-something members of the audience). The room is euphoric - it's a legitimised and heartfelt indie-singalong, it's everybody in the room's personal pain and experience metamorphosed into a soaring choral melody, and a musical community's experiences transposed into orchestral arrangements.
The whole set follows those lines of hyperbole, and perhaps the greatest credit that can be done to the new material is that only rarely does it distract from the general adoration in the room - it fits snugly betwixt songs from both Funeral and Neon Bible, offering occasional arresting moments of musical or lyrical beauty, and otherwise carrying on the baton seamlessly between the songs we all already know. In total over half of the set is comprised of new songs tonight, a proportion that seems entirely out-of-keeping with the ardent fists-in-the-air response to the whole show. It's proof of the strength of the new material and the band's conviction in it, but does raise the only concern: that AF might not have moved on enough from the old material to make The Suburbs a landmark third album.
The band's conviction certainly can’t be questioned, however. William Butler's tracksuit bottoms are a whirl across the stage - he could be at any one corner of it, or anywhere in between, at any one time. That insane energy contrasts massively with the much more tightly coiled pressure of Win and Regine (whose party frock couldn't contrast more starkly either), but as standout new track (and first UK single) 'We Used To Wait' really kicks in even Win finds himself lying prostrate on the willing hands of the crowd, playing guitar with his eyes to the Hackney Empire's spectacular tiered ceiling.
As the 8 instrument-swapping members work the audience consistently up into a frenzy ('Intervention' and 'Power Out' are still to come before the encore even hits) the band swing between anthemic choruses and carefully constructed melodic pop, which only occasionally ventures into twee-ness with the new songs. And if at any point your attention might be left to wander, it alights immediately on something musically bizarre. What the hell is going on with those asynchronous, screeching string arrangements? (and if that sounds like a criticism, go and listen to somebody doing asynchronous screeching string arrangements who's doing it properly - it's a compliment). It's perhaps the best reasoning behind collecting this many talented musicians into the band - they're individually outstanding at the same time as being collectively even more so.
As the show works towards its first climax, a roomful of moshing believers chanting in the church of Arcade Fire, it takes its turn towards the anticipated but yet to be witnessed stadium rock. Shadows of Bruce start to appear, with a false ending to 'Power Out' running without pause straight into 'Rebellion'. The pulsing lights have grown frantic and epileptic, and Win is practically singing 'Power Out' as a monotone mission statement or raison d'etre. New song 'Month of May' seems a slightly off kilter rock 'n' roll way to end the set, but at this point we'd willingly accept most things from the onstage troupe.
Even better then that the encore won't ask any such thing of us. The realisation that the band had managed to keep 'Tunnels', 'Keep the Car Running' and 'Wake Up' in the bag, after being initially astonishing, was gratefully accepted. There's not an unsmiling face in the crowd, nor a hand not raised, nor a voice not hoarse as the band power their way into a truly remarkable finale. And then there's that perfect final moment of the set, as all 1200 members of the Arcade Fire sing the outro to ‘Wake Up’. Everything comes together, and the room becomes Arcade Fire's London choir, every bit as much a part of the band as the 8 musicians on the stage.
And so it ends - the general reaction being one of relatively stunned silence. The overriding feeling is that the Arcade Fire still have some revelations to come - give the new songs played in this room another two years and they will be part of the encore, and the anthems that surround the next new batch of material. A genuinely stunning show – one that fills me with hope and expectations for the imminent release of their next LP, and for the 5 or 6 after that.
Artists in this article: Arcade Fire
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