Tuesday, December 14, 2010

This arcade's on fire!

Okay, that was a bad Kings of Leon pun to start with!

Now, I accept that in the past I have been cynical or suspicious of Arcade Fire (like herehere and here), but then 'The suburbs' turned me around more than a little (as admitted here), and when I saw they were to play Dublin in December alongside Vampire Weekend, I decided that it was time to see what all the live fuss was about.   I read a review of the gig here, the author of which very much shared my view on the band, and my inability to 'get' them the way others did, but this was their chance to break down my final defences and claim me for their own.

I also decided it would be my 10-year-old's first big concert, as he linked both acts, and we had not managed to get a family  ticket to Electric Picnic, even after buying the tent especially (at least I got to finally see the National in Ireland in 2010, the night before the Arcade Fire gig, as ecstatically reviewed here).

It was also acrually my first concert at Dublin's key venue, the O2, which I had been to some gigs in years ago in its previous incarnation as The Point Depot (maybe Pulp, the Waterboys, and a Feile festival, if memory serves me right).

Even with dashing through the Dublin snow, we didn't get there in time for Devendra Banhart (who I had heard recommended through Uncut, and whose 'Smoky rolls down thunder mountain' I gave a good try during the week before the gig, before concluding that the cool name was my favourite thing about it), but I was quite keen to see Vampire Weekend.

Their debt was one of my favourite albums of 2008, but 'Contra' earlier this year left me severely disappointed; although it did contain my favourite song of all of their's ('Giving up the gun'), the rest of the tracks did nothing for me.  Live, they came across as technically excellent (particularly the drumming) but somewhat cold and unemotional, as if they had read the textbooks on how to make passionate music and could push the buttons, but did not bring real heart and soul to the deal.  All the clinical aloofness from their records was amplified on stage, and I was somewhat disappointed.

Interestingly, leaving the last three songs of your set to your debut suggested to me they might, deep down, share my view on its follow-up (they never played 'gun', alas), and my iPhone captured the three.  First up was 'Oxford Comma', on which I wrote one of the first posts for this blog here, and which I still love:



Apologies for the video quality on these, as I didn't get as close as I would otherwise have, due to my small-scale apprentics.  'Oxford comma' was followed by 'Walcott', which I always also loved on album, but much of the ornate instrumentation of which was a little lost by the more basic live set up:



Finally (I think, maybe I have order mixed up) came the wonderfully oddball 'Mansard roof', which was certainly a statement of aristocractic knowing intent at the start of the debut:



Then came the break and build up to the main event, which inevitably involved a fair degree of reconstruction of the stage to fit a significantly more expansive and ambitiously instrumented Arcade Fire.  They came on stage with 'Ready to start', loud and proud, and basically hurled themselves at their instruments with a level of energy and gusto which was all the more incredible for the fact that they maintained it for almost 2 hours.  The waves of raw energy and passion rolling off the stage were quite astonishing, and I can understand the longstanding hype about their live shows.

The sudden spike in levels of everything, crowd adrenaline included, proved at this point a little too much for my son, so we beat a tactical retreat back a little to a place where there was more space, and so the quality of the subsequent video clips suffered a little as a result, and I didn't film as much as I might otherwise, particularly at the start.  When doing a bit of research for this post, I found an incredible web-site called 'Setlist' which includes the set-list (below, thanks to their cool widget) for the gig as well as clips of all songs, albeit not from this actual gig, plus lyrics here). 


I must admit that, without my audio-visual props to remind me, the first half of the gig was a bit of an overwhelming blur, with snippets of memories of band members beating hell out of drums held by other band members, and routinely swapping instruments, and the 'drive-in'-like giant screen showing a variety of images, some abstract, some less so (including some strange images for one song of what appeared to be female heads bobbing in water like something from an early 20th Century German expressionist movie, if I actually knew what those really looked like).  I also remember that 'we used to wait' featured lots of images of stamps and envelopes, like an ode to a pre-emmail era.

I did capture 'The suburbs', which is a great opener to the album of that name:



and 'Intervention', which is my son's favourite:



The main set finished with 'Neighbourhood #3 (Power out)' flowing kinetically and through sheer power of momentum into 'Rebellion (Lies)'.  So many of their songs do seems like several songs co-evolving together and fighting to be heard that such flow seems completely natural and organic, and I did capture it:



They came back after the perfunctory absence for 'Keep the car running' and what is apparently their traditional closer 'Wake up':



So overall, a very good gig and undeniably powerful.  Their audience interaction is pretty good too, with a few reflections our economic woes and also a plea for support for Haiti before the song of the same name, and several references to Ireland being their favourite place to play (of course).

There is no doubt that their commitment, passion, musicianship and energy in a live setting are about as good as I have ever seen, and really takes the breath away.  They must be one of the best live bands in the world without any doubt.  My only problem comes back to my own personal relationship with the songs, which has never been that strong, despite my best efforts, and leaves in place a residual barrier to my fully engagin heart and soul with the concert.  It is hard to compare this behemoth with the small scale of The National but there is no doubt that the previous night's gig, stately and sedate by comparison, meant far more to me as I knew and loved every song so completely.

However, would I go and see Arcade Fire again?  In a shot. Click Here to Read More..

Tuesday, December 7, 2010

The National anthems in Dublin

It just felt unfair, unjust, when I couldn’t, despite many efforts, get tickets for The National’s Dublin gigs in the venerable Olympia Theatre when they were announced back in September. Who were those who had got there ahead of me and what had they done to deserve it more than me? Had they pathetically chronicled their obsessions with ‘High violet’ here or here, for example? Did I not somehow deserve a ticket for such loyal on-line advocacy?  

But then fate took pity on me, and a friend in need offered me his ticket for the Saturday night, just five days before the gig, and I seized both ticket and opportunity gratefully, and travelled from Cork to Dublin through an unseasonably wintry landscape that morning.

I arrived eagerly early (I went on my own), both out of predictable excitement for them and interest in the support, Phosphorescent (of whom a review will follow in a later post - but they were really good).  The ticket was for standing space, so I got as close as I ould to the stage without having one of the mysterious VIP-style wristbands (who the hell are those lucky folks?), and savoured the difference to the last time I saw them in the same venue, when it felt like I was watching them from a Google Earth satellite (I discussed this gig here).  I did get see my favourite drummer (indeed, perhaps, favourite musician) Bryan Devendorf checking his own drums during the set-up (right). 

Anyway, the video clip below captures the moments after the houselights dimmed and I love the image of the mike stands on stage against the light, like the cranes that once adorned Dublin's skyline in pre-bust days (alas and alack).  Then they appeared and started unexpectedly (for me, last time they started with the far more upbeat 'Brainy') with 'Runaway', but a lovely stately version of it, and I really liked the screen, which showed a range of images mixed with footage of the band playing, and occasionally the audience.


They then moved pretty quickly into 'Anyone's ghost', which has really grown on me as one of their rate moments of 3-minute pop, veering pretty close to New Order territory:



Then, introduced by Aaron as 'a song from Alligator' came the wonderful 'Secret Meeting', the last minute of which (with the shouty chanting I regard as one of my favourite National moments of all):



What a great start!  At this point I was almost faint with sheer euphoria, and resolved not to obsessively film every song, but to actually just enjoy most of them in the actual now, as opposed to heated emotion recollected in later tranquility (and then uploaded to this blog!).  For this reason, I didn't get clips of 'England', 'Bloodbuzz Ohio', 'Lemonworld' (the elongated intro to which allowed Matt to pop off stage briefly), or several others (as mentioned below). 

I did put the iPhone to use a lot, though, and I think the rest of these clips are in approximate order from the gig, starting with 'Slow show', of which I now have another version to add to at least three distinct ones I already have (including the demo from 'Virginia' and the Daytrotter session) in which Aaron ignored the keyboard behind him to do the ending on the guitar instead:



Of course, I had to capture my beloved 'Apartment story', with an acousticish drum-free intro leading into quite a laidback (for The National) version which I really liked:



At some stage later came the below version of 'Sorrow' (in which the way Matt sings the line 'I don't wanna get over you' always packs an emotional punch for me):



To this point, I thought Matt seemed less self-conscious and nervous (and perhaps drunk) than in previous gigs and clips and reviews, and the banter at the start of 'Conversation 16' below is genuinely relaxed and funny:



A little later, the intensity ramped up several dozen notches with an insane version of 'Abel', towards the end of which Matt launched himself into the crowd for the first time (and kept singing well, God bless him!):

I actuallycan't remember what they finished the main set with (blame the emotional overload) but I will never forget the encore, when they came back with an incendiary trio of 'Mr November', 'Mistaken for strangers' and 'Terrible love'.  Part way through the latter, Matt took off crowd-surfing once again, and ended up mere feet from me (see evidence left!).
At this point, my iPhone memory was starting to cry for mercy (why didn't I temporarily purge the fecker in advance?), which is why another reason I didn't capture the above trio, but I did have enough for the last track, when Phosphorescent joined them on stage for 'Vanderlyle Cry Baby Geeks' (no singing from the band really needed, the crowd did most of the work!):



At some point, they welcomed Richard Reed Perry of Arcade Fire to the stage, where he joined them on backing vocals and sometimes guitar for several songs.  Matt welcomed him with a joke about him owning the distribution rights to their music, and then mumbled about that sounding better in his head.  There were also two horn players on stage, and while I have always been ambivalent about the contribution of horns to The National's music, on stage that night it actually really worked, and filled in detail around the songs and little subtle but noticeable embellishments that definitely contributed positively.

Overall, a really really great gig, from a perfect position, with great sound, a crowd that more than earned their right to have got their damned tickets ahead of me with their enthusiasm and evident equal obsession to mine (as amply proven in the singalong to 'Vanderlyle'), and simply some of my favourite music ever to relish.

The next night brought a very different concert with Arcade Fire (review of which, including the Vampire Weekend warm-up slot), and perhaps more spectacle and even more madness, but at the end of the day it will always come back to the songs and how much they mean to you, and for that reason I find it very hard to believe last Saturday night in the Olympia will ever be beaten. Click Here to Read More..
 
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