The Fire is Burning

The Arcade Fire is no longer an underground sensation or one of those bands where people say "oh yeah, they sound familiar." I first heard of them in the fall of 2006 and they didn't immediately grab me. At the time I was more skeptical of semi-electronic sounding music and preferred being able to listen to each instrument in turn. They vocals on the songs I heard also seemed a bit obscured, which doesn't generally suit me.

It was the following spring or summer that I learned - listening to their first full length album "Funeral" on the metro to and from work and internships. Their music has something special and I still can't quite put my finger on it.

Friday night I saw them in concert for the first time. They played DAR Constitution Hall here in D.C., which is not one of the better places to see a show. Having come up on the Allman Brothers and then Phish and Widespread Panic, I am accustomed to seeing concerts where there aren't a great deal of stops between songs and the songs are generally between 6 and 8 minutes, so it was difficult to adjust to shorter songs with longer stops after each song. The 80 minute set is what I'm used to being the first set, not the whole show.

But all that said, the show was great. The energy in the room started to coalesce about half way through and the band did a nice job building momentum into the end of the show and the encore. If you have a chance to see them live, I highly recommend it.

Their records, however, absolutely must be on your shelf. No collection is complete without them. This could be the best band of the decade.

Even more taken than I was, a writer from the Washington Post characterized the band as "a sort of modern-day art-rock answer to Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band" and found "an undeniable grandeur and a thrilling vastness to the songs . . . but it's no empty bombast: In the studio and especially in concert, Arcade Fire's emotional music plays as deeply meaningful, soul-stirring art."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/05/AR2007050500995.html

Here are 2 mp3s from their show in New York on February 17 of this year. The first is a bit slower and close to spoken word. The other is not:

My Body is a Cage

Keep the Car Running



* I should recognize that the brothers who lead the band are from Texas, although they moved to Canadia before forming the band.