The Arcade Fire
Warfield Theater, San Francisco (September 18, 2005)
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The Arcade Fire
Warfield Theater, San Francisco
September 18, 2005 |
In two more months, the Arcade Fire will open for U2 at several monstrous hockey arenas in eastern Canada. The sightlines will be bad: thousands of people will be behind the band or at the back of the floor or twelve miles from the stage. There will be screens, but they won’t be 20 inches diagonally, and they won’t show the Cubs game.
This September Sunday night in San Francisco was a stop in between. The Warfield is a big old theater with great sound and painted garlands on the wall. It’s also the biggest sort of place where a band can get by with a club-style stage show. At a venue any bigger, too much of the audience will be so far away that screens and giant light shows and pyrotechnics will practically be required. That’ll be a shame for Arcade Fire fans, ‘cause I’m not sure how someone in section 517 is supposed to see multi-instrumentalist Will Butler wrapping a the fabric from a shattered room divider around other multi-instrumentalist Richard Parry’s head as Parry tries to sing backing vocals. I’m not sure how anyone sitting in the upper mezzanine level by the hot dog stand is supposed to see exactly how damaged the cymbal kept at stage right for band members to beat on when they have nothing else to do – and I mean beat on – actually is. Some bands, perhaps, aren’t meant to scale.
But scaling too large, at least on this night, wasn’t a problem. Exhaustion might have been – getting this big this fast on the strength of a single album has meant a year of non-stop touring for the band. In the past twelve months, they’ve crisscrossed North America a half-dozen times and taken a jaunt to Europe. Getting stale was certainly on the mind of frontman Win Butler, who spoke of his distaste for a radio-station gig they’d played in L.A. earlier in the week (“We’re corporate whores. But, shit, what are you going to do?”) and seemed genuinely surprised and pleased after that experience to find an audience excited to hear his music. I think he forgot that just because he’d played all the songs on last year’s Funeral 12,000 times, some of us hadn’t actually seen them played live even once.
On this night, they played all of Funeral’s tracks save one (“7 Kettles”), and every song worked. Every one.
We’d been standing at floor level for about two hours by the time Arcade Fire came on, though the opening acts were worth the wait. Bell Orchestre, Parry and violinist Sara Neufeld’s side project, was typical opening-act fare: interesting, but too short and too different from what we’d come to see to get too excited about. The music, though -- vigorously-played strings, jazzy horns and electronica-and-drums -- warrants another listen. The second opening act was Wolf Parade. It was my first exposure to them, and I couldn’t understand anything they spoke or sang, so I can’t be too descriptive. They did put on a rocking show that got better and better as it went on, even if they only occasionally used a bass player. I was left with the impression that I’d seen one part Strokes, one part Arcade Fire, and one part Monster Mash (it was a graveyard smash). I can and will, however, describe the band itself: the guitarist channeled Iggy Pop, the keyboardist/singer channeled Jason Bateman, the drummer channeled a big co-op-living granola hippie, the bass/rhythm guitar/tambourine player channeled the guy from the 7-Up commercials, and the guy playing the electronics channeled a philosophy grad student.
Teenage hipster after teenage hipster crowded our area in front of the stage before the main act came on, packing us in like sardines, or like fans at the front of a rock concert, I suppose. One particularly charming young gentleman with a mohawk and a vacant stare physically shoved people aside to get to his girlfriend (another woman next to us said to her, “I feel really sorry for you”). Another gem, smelly and wearing a dirty white hat, leaned steadily on my back and against the people around us, knowing we’d eventually get annoyed and give way. I recite these hardships not to elicit sympathy, but to illustrate the effect: before the Arcade Fire came on, before the tattered red curtain parted, I was pissed and tired. Seconds later, Win Butler was standing on stage with his pallid skin, his lank brown hair and his black suit, his similarly-clad lunatic bandmates were prancing around him, the band launched into the opening crescendo of “Wake Up,” white-hat guy was forgotten, and I was happy once more.
“Wake Up” was indeed a highlight of the show, as were lively and pounding renditions of “Crown of Love,” “Neighborhood #2 (Laika),” and especially “Rebellion (Lies)”. Older, acoustic songs fell a bit flat, as did, disappointingly, a “Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)” plagued by monitor problems during the encore.
At every point, though, the band was a frenzy of movement. Every song ended with an instrument switch. During the show, a total of four people played bass, four played guitar, two played drums, three played xylophone, maybe five played keys, etc., and they managed to do it while avoiding any notable loss in musical quality. Will Butler and Parry, in particular, danced and hammered on things and broke microphones and cymbals. Parry cut his finger beating the crap out of something. He called for a Band-Aid, but no one brought one, so he just played on. Later in the show, at Win Butler’s turn at the keys, he said, “I see Richard bled all over the keyboard. And the synth. I haven’t seen that for a couple of months, and it warms my heart.” Rock and roll.
A few times, Win tried to lower things into the crowd, but each one got devoured. A microphone came back with its cord ripped out Two microphone stands were broken. None of that stopped Win from crowd surfing a few times with his electric guitar – prudence is probably not his game. His fearlessness provided a fitting encore, though. As the last beats of “In the Backseat” faded away, Butler and guitarist Tim Kinsbury surfed their way to the back our section and then kept walking. The house lights came on, and we left the venue, not knowing where they’d gone. But when we left the building, there they were in front of the venue, on the streets of San Francisco’s Tenderloin District (more “loin” than “tender”), still playing and banging and hollering on.
JEFF GRAY | Jeff Gray used to be an important mover and shaker in Chicago, but gave all that up to live on a beach in rural Hawaii. You'll notice him if you're there, he's the one who's very tall and a little bit sunburned. His musical tastes tend towards the mainstream -- Phish, Radiohead, The Strokes -- but he'll argue to the death that those bands are mainstream because they're 100% awesome. Jeff's always on the lookout for the next great pop song, tidbits about Michigan football, and 80's action movies on cable.