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X-POSURE Listener Blog 7 - Arcade Fire

added 08 September 2011 at 12.43

This week’s X-POSURE listener blog comes from XFM’r and the awesomely named GIDEON. Read his eloquent and thoughful bloggings after seeing the Arcade Fire below.

"I'd never seen Arcade Fire live before, but was well aware of the acclaim they had received for their live performances having read many reviews and seen recorded performances. They did not disappoint.

The venue was fairly generic for a gig like this, nothing I hadn't seen before, but the steep seating added a real intensity to the audience, with the fans in seating towering over us lucky ones in front of the stage. The audience were very keen to get involved but were perhaps subdued a little with Win Butler, front man of Arcade Fire, imploring those in seating to get on their feet, proclaiming it to be a "strange culture".

There was a real buzz around the stadium when they first appeared, especially as they had been following Noah and The Whale who performed, for lack of a better word, with very little charisma, causing very little excitement when playing their "hits". With most fans  well aware of what was to follow, the excitement went up several notches when the silhouetted images of Arcade Fire began appearing on stage.

They started with "Ready to Start", which is a personal favourite of mine, which, with its potent bass line and instantly recognisable intro, pumped intensity into the crowd and started proceedings on a energetic note.

The highlight of the gig for me was probably when they began playing "No Cars Go", purely for the reason that the song has an awesome intro and really got the crowd moving.

The stage show was pretty minimalist, with a fairly large screen displaying images to go along with each song; music videos and so on,  which were merged with images of the band playing. The lighting was fairly average.

The bar break song would have to be "Speaking in tongues", especially having followed "Rococo" as they are both pretty mellow songs and very soothing rather than trying to lift you.

I knew exactly what to expect with Arcade Fire as I've watched a lot of their recorded performances, but obviously nothing can compare with actually being 10 feet away from them playing, and every member contributes a huge amount to the performance. You feel like you've bonded with the band by the end of the show. I was pleasantly surprised that they played a lot of their old material as well, as the venue had made out as if the gig would be predominantly material from The Suburbs, so that added an extra nugget of joy.

9/10. I'm not a fan of the supporting act, Noah and the Whale, and the venue didn't make any particularly great effort to enhance our experience, but perhaps that would have been overdoing it rather than just letting the band entertain me, which they did exactly that.

I didn't buy any souvenirs but I did buy my ticket into a draw to win some merchandise, with the money being donated to a Haitian charity, due to Regine's links with the country."

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