Monday, December 13, 2010

Arcade Fire Live in Glasgow

Last night's Arcade Fire show in Glasgow was fantastic. And to my pleasant surprise on youtube I can piece together and relive about half of the concert from multiple angles. All the clips below are from 'our' show, with the exception of Laika because I love it but could only find it from the London performance. This is the actual set list, and I've included some pictures and lyrics that stood out as well.


READY TO START


All the kids have always known / that the emperor wears no clothes / but to bow down to them anyway / is better than to be alone .... But I would rather be alone / than pretend I feel alright


MONTH OF MAY


(see also here)


KEEP THE CAR RUNNING


(see short clip here)


NEIGHBOURHOOD #2 (LAIKA)


Alexander, our older brother / set out for a great adventure / He tore our images out of his pictures / he scratched our names out of all his letters .... Our mother shoulda / just named you Laika! / It's for your own good, / it's for the neighborhood!
(Incidentally, Laika is the name of the first dog in space, who of course did not come back)


NO CARS GO


The video images in this one were oddly mesmerizing. This was one of the highlights of the show I thought.


HAITI




SPRAWL II (MOUNTAINS BEYOND MOUNTAINS)
Living in the sprawl / Dead shopping malls rise / like mountains beyond mountains / And there's no end in sight /I need the darkness someone please cut the lights / They heard me singing and they told me to stop / Quit these pretentious things and just punch the clock / Sometimes I wonder if the world's so small / Can we ever get away from the sprawl?


MODERN MAN




ROCOCO


(By the way, Rococo is the ornately expressive follow up to the Baroque period of art. I think the repetition of it is one of The Suburbs many ironies.)


MY BODY IS A CAGE


set my spirit free...


THE SUBURBS


I just can't understand / How I want a daughter while I'm still young / I want to hold her hand / Show her some beauty / Before this damage is done / But if it's too much to ask / If it's too much to ask / Send me a son


THE SUBURBS (CONTINUED)




NEIGHBOURHOOD #1 (TUNNELS)




WE USED TO WAIT


We used to wait .... now we're screaming sing the chorus again!
(More irony. Pleasant irony, of course, but still. Does a good job being about 'the old days' without being sentimental.)


NEIGHBOURHOOD #3 (POWER OUT)


(So. Much. Energy! This was a great one.)


REBELLION (LIES)



Encore:
INTERVENTION


Working for the church / While your family dies / You take what they give you / And you keep it inside / Every spark of friendship and love / Will die without a home / Hear the soldier groan, / "We'll go at it alone"
(This song kills me)


WAKE UP


(I've talked about this song before.)




I don't know if it is suburban angst, anti-empire sentiment, or just being a 'Gen-Xer', but this band gets me in lots of ways.

We all wished for Suburban War and agreed My Body Is A Cage might have been 'done' a little more, but it was still good. Very good. What a show!

4 comments:

Brett said...

Lucky.

I love it when someone goes to a concert and gives a nice overview like this. Its thorough, yet personal.

This is a great band that came into popularity in Montreal. I lived in Montreal in the fall of 2000 with my cousin. We went to play basketball with a few people he knew.

A few years later and my cousin tells me that we played basketball with Win Butler. He knew him through a cafe which held an open mic every week. Pretty funny world we live in.

With all my fuss over Sufjan's outfit a few threads ago I must say that I never get tired of the show that Arcade Fire puts on.

Lucky.

Jon Coutts said...

Wow that's cool.
And yeah, Arcade Fire puts on a good old fashioned rock concert, without being boring. And yeah I am grateful to have been able to go.

Jon Coutts said...

Apparently the band ended up at a pub we walked by after the show. Kicking ourselves for not having gone in.

During the concert they said Dublin and Glasgow were their favourite places to play. We tried to figure out why, and our best theory was that it was because it really felt like an actual cross-section of the city was there. There were a lot of 'hipsters', but generally speaking there was every age and type of person you could imagine.

Come to think of it, since it was only a UK tour, many people seemed to have come from continental Europe as well.

Justin said...

Man - you did all the work - this is awesome! Amazing how pitch perfect the band sounds - incredible show, good times, and good friends

No video from that piano bar though?

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