>>PREVIEW
THE ARCADE FIRE
Wednesday, October 5
MacEwan Hall (U of C)
To study the last year in the life of The Arcade Fire is to discover a group of artists whose staggering abilities more than transcend the nearly suffocating attention lavished upon them. It’s also a fascinating story of a group of Canadians who will be joining U2 on their next tour and whose most recent New York show saw them perform a two-song encore with David Bowie — with Bowie on accompanying vocals.
All it takes is a listen to the group’s debut full-length masterwork, Funeral, to understand the rapt adulation. It’s the type of album bands take years to perfect, and The Arcade Fire is already the rare type of band everyone loves to love.
A Canadian indie-rock mainstay in his own right (thanks to shifts with Kepler, Snailhouse and a stream of others), drummer Jeremy Gara accepted an invitation to join The Arcade Fire with little idea of the ride he and his bandmates were in for.
"While I was touring with another band, the Pitchfork review came out," says Gara. The popular Internet indie-rock bible gave Funeral a rating of 9.7/10 and has followed the band ever since. "Nobody’s complaining, but it’s been pretty out of control," says Gara.
Formed around the husband-and-wife team of Win Butler and Régine Chassagne (not to mention an ever-expanding group of backing players, including Butler’s younger brother Will and Final Fantasy’s Owen Pallett), The Arcade Fire have been impressing people from their earliest days in Montreal, opening for The Unicorns and The Hidden Cameras. For Gara, the chance to be part of The Arcade Fire’s live incarnation was an opportunity he knew he had to take.
"Even before I joined and just saw them opening for The Unicorns, there’s always been this kind of play-every-show-like-you-have-to-win-every-single-person-over mentality, and everyone’s always given 110 per cent," he says. "It’s the first band I’ve ever been in where every single person’s giving their absolute whole all of the time."
And since Gara’s enrolment, the trajectory of The Arcade Fire has approximated that of a snowball down a ski hill — gaining momentum and size with each week, to the point where some of the most influential names in rock are playing along. Of their recent live appearances with Bowie, Gara (and the rest of the group) remain suitably starstruck. "That was surreal," he says. "It was the first time he’s played since his heart attack awhile ago, and it was so beautiful. He came out, we just put him in front of a microphone, and he just went for it. I couldn’t – I can’t – believe this is happening."
But don’t expect The Arcade Fire to shy away from their heroes either. "We’re totally in everybody’s face and when there’s somebody in our crowd who we love and respect, we chase after them. David Byrne came to a couple of shows and when we spotted him there, we just ended up e-mailing him. We actually played one of his songs ("Naïve Melody") while he was in the audience, and while we were playing it people were bugging him about it. We e-mailed to quietly apologize, and by our next show he was up onstage singing with us." (The results of this pairing have recently been released on limited-edition, glow-in-the-dark seven-inch)
Still, with loving praise comes the threat of backlash, and The Arcade Fire feel the followup pressure building already. Their response thus far seems the wisest — once the tour’s finished, The Arcade Fire promise to disappear until they’ve put together something to equal Funeral’s impact.
"Nobody really knows what the next one’s going to be like. We’ve just bought a church outside of Montreal and we’ve been setting it up as a studio. Once this tour’s done, we’re going to go to the church and just hang out and play music together," says Gara.
That’s not to say The Arcade Fire’s not the slightest bit worried about what they’ll do next. "Inevitably it’s going to face such a tougher criticism. If you do something great the first time, everyone’s going to really judge it harshly the second time. To us, we’re just going to disappear and do what we do. It really doesn’t matter what anybody wants to hear from us — at the end of the day it’s just going to be us together, working it until we love it." |
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