Arcade fire

I am having a great couple of weeks of music which is very unusual as I am somewhat of a music under-appreciator. A couple of weeks ago I was lucky enough to see Babylon Circus at the Becks Bar, this 10 piece big band were described in the Sydney Festival program as, “French blenders of ska-punk, chanson, funk, afro-beat, dancehall reggae and Eastern European folk (who) rouse the Bar with their multi-lingual antics and big-top energy.” Put a capital ‘E’ on energy; these guys leaped around 5 feet off the ground, barely touching down for most of the show. Without exception they took the whole crowd from 20 to 50-somethings to a pulsating, throbbing mass. Much of their music has a political focus with an anti-war theme underpinning their third album, Dances of Resistance. If you get the chance to catch a concert do so! I walked away from Babylon Circus thinking that I had my concert experience for 2008 (and it was only January!), then I found that one of my favourite bands, Arcade Fire was playing in Sydney (yay!) this month but… there were no tickets left (boo!)

Arcade Fire’s latest album Neon Bible was one of my repeatables in 2007, a repeatable is a single album that I play for months on end. Take that literally, I put it on stereo on repeat and let it play endlessly. How great it must be to live with me!

Arcade Fire is a sensational band from Canada, their music is layered with sounds (a church organ, military music from Budapest, a hurdy gurdy, violins, brass as well as all the usual suspects), references, meaning, political and social comment, a big heart and intelligent lyrics, (“Working for the church while our life falls apart. Singin’ hallelujah with the fear in your heart.“). So much so that I would set the challenge that there is no way to listen to their music without finding something that personally resonates in there.

Headed up by husband and wife team Win Butler (grew up in Texas) and Regina Chassagne (emigrated to Canada with her parents to escape the Haitian political situation), Arcade Fire have a unique way of digging at the heart of America that is insightful, unflinching and at the same time filled with a kind of pathos that ensures they never repeat the kind of dogma they expose and interrogate.

Described as an indie band (what does that mean anyway?), there are obvious musical references to Talking Heads and Bruce Springsteen, my musician partner also swears links to Burt Bacharach and Billy Joel, go figure, I can only see this at a very big stretch, let me know what you think.

Beyond their recorded and live music, their working process is also inspiring, Nasty little man says,

Coming off a year of intense touring, they wanted to just sit down and write some songs. And then record them. So they found a church out in a small town and turned it into a studio. They moved in all their amps and instruments, bought some nice curtains, stocked the fridge, and hunkered down. They were in no rush…

They knew they were working on an album, but didn’t know how long it would be, or what it would be called, or what songs would be on it, or what instruments would be on the songs. They knew they would produce it themselves, though—they had too many musical plans pent up in their brains to hand control over to someone else. So they found some grand engineers to make those musical plans reality—Markus Dravs (Bjork, James, Brian Eno) and Scott Colburn (Sun City Girls, Animal Collective).

If you missed the concert, buy the album for a taste here’s YouTube footage of them at Glastonbury.

If you are a budding musician or artist in whatever capacity and you can’t find the next project, maybe follow the lead of Arcade Fire, find a space, grab some friends and some instruments and get lost in playing until it all comes together.

BTW, I did get into the Arcade Fire concert last night (phew!) and it enters the archives as one of the best every musical moments ever, right up there with Icelandic band Sigur Ros who I saw in NZ a couple of years ago and local songsters Decoder Ring at Splendor in the Grass 2006. Next stop on the cultural milieu, La Clique in the spiegeltent Saturday week.