Arcade Fire @ The Shrine Auditorium. 10/7/10.

"rough like timberland wear..."

This may come as a surprise, but I'm also a fan of NON-EXTREME METAL. Like...regular music. Strange huh? Well yeah, although most of my time is spent listening to growls, blast beats and ungodly time changes I honestly enjoy all kinds of music. Montreal's Arcade Fire are not only one of my favorite "normal" bands, but one of my favorite acts period. I first stumbled upon them on accident. About five years ago I had downloaded At The Drive-In's In Casino Out off SoulSeek and some careless/unorganized user included Arcade Fire's "Wake Up" in the album file. One second I'm listening to angular post-punk and the next, its Arcade Fire...majestic and catchy as fuck. I was hooked and immediately downloaded their debut album Funeral and the rest is history.

So now Arcade Fire are huge. They've always been indie media darlings as far as I've known, but now they're like # 1 album in the country, touring w/ U2, "saviors of rock music" ultra hype huge. I've seen them slay thousands at Coachella. I've watched them in the freezing cold at the Hollywood Bowl. Tonight, they were playing one of two shows at the far more intimate Shrine Auditorium (inb4 6,000 seats is still big). They were playing a smaller, indoor venue and promoting their awesome new album The Suburbs. Needless to say I was stoked. So of course I started fighting a nasty cold the day of the show. Figures.


The sold out show was filled to the brim with dirty hipsters, yuppies, grandma & grandpa Woodstock veterans and all around goofy fuckers like myself. HOT chicks though. Despite the differences in the audiences' demographics, we all came together in rocking out once our favorite Canadians took the stage. They opened with "Ready to Start" off their new album and began the kickass-ery that lasted the entire night. Sure, there was some moments of muddled sound, Win's guitar's stopped working mid way through their set and he flat out forgot some lyrics toward the end, but really people, Arcade Fire tore the joint up. They played a healthy does of new material ("Sprawl II," "Modern Man," "Rococo," "We Used to Wait,") and old tracks off Funeral ("Laika", "Haiti," "Rebellion Lies") with a few Neon Bible cuts thrown in as well ("No Cars Go," "Intervention,").


This easily one of my favorite Arcade Fire songs. It's like some ancient tribal Ewok jam and I fucking love it. If the Storm Troopers had been blasting this out the side of their Imperial Walkers, they would have subdued Endor a whole lot quicker is all I'm saying.


This is another old Funeral track only it was recorded by some lucky bastard with a better seat than me. I remember the first time I saw this video on MTV2 and it kicked my ass. Notice how the chick singing in the other video is playing drums here? Yeah, they're all pretty much multi-instrumentalists. Seven (sometimes eight or nine) dudes/dudettes onstage...like a talented Slipknot, or an Amish Wu-Tang Clan.

So yeah. Arcade Fire put on a damn good show and I heard night two was even better. My personal highlight of the evening was Win talking shit about the Lakers before drowning out the boos and groans by launching into "Power Out." Good stuff man.

* side note. I saw a few minor celebrities walking around after the concert ended (the asian doctor on Grey's Anatomy/naked chick in Sideways, Hyde from That '70s Show, and the retarded guy from The Office)...too bad I didn't give two shits about any of them. Funny because I met Danzig at the Shrine when I was a teenager during some comic book/porn fest before I even cared about The Misfits.