arcade fire : funeral music to make you happy
Remember when it used to be funny to make fun of Canadian music? How we’d jingoistically laugh at their rules about having a certain percentage of Canadian artists played on the radio? Clearly, those days are over as any Shuffle Songs / Party Shuffle adventure on iTunes is likely to hit a brilliant Canadian band within three tracks or fewer.
Tomorrow, some of Montreal’s finest make their way to the Paramount [#]. The Arcade Fire, whose late-2004 Funeral[$] quickly secured a place as an album most likely to end up on countless “albums that changed my life” lists, bring their fantastic stage show to Seattle.
And by “fantastic” I mean completely flipping out awesome. That is, if you go for the sort of show filled with performers who switch instruments between songs, turn electric guitars and violins into marching band instruments, transform tambourine playing into a full-body workout, do robot dances while singing, occasionally flip out and/or strangle each other, and create wall of soundish backing vocals.
The internet says that the show is sold out, which makes a lot of sense. However, if you’re as resourceful as I think you are, you will explore your social networks and craigslist to find a spare ticket. Your Wednesday night deserves it.
I saw them last Thursday at the CMJ music marathon performance in Central Park. While I don’t think it’s reasonable for us to expect a repeat surprise David Bowie appearance in Seattle, it’s completely sensible to expect to have an incredibly good time. If you want to do your homework before attending the show, give the recently re-released self-titled EP [$] a spin on your playlist, since the band seems to like using the middle section of their setlist as an opportunity to play some of their older songs which usually sound new to people who have only heard the LP.
Along for the ride are Bell Orchestre a subset of the Arcade Fire who play instrumental music that would be suitable for scoring your next sexy spy film, and are the kind of band to inspire fans to spend the concert sketching Richard Perry playing the stand-up bass. Also on the agenda are up-and-comers Wolf Parade, who are sort of like a sparser fusion-jazzier version of the headliners. Of course, this is a completely unfair comparison, but the point is that if you like the Arcade Fire, it’s really likely that you’ll also enjoy Wolf Parade; so why not show up on time?
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That show was simply amazing.
I strongly suggest, if you did not attend last night, going to see them in Vancouver BC on October 7th. (It’s so rare that bands don’t play PDX-SEA-VAN all in a row…gives everyone a second chance this time)
What a beautfiul, beautiful performance.
Surprisingly enough, GA tickets are still available for their Vancouver show. So tempting to see them again!