Arcade Fire, October 7 at the Shrine

When tickets went on sale for the Arcade Fire show I sent out an e-mail to my concert-buddies months in advance and couldn’t drum up much interest. The band had headlined Lollapalooza just a short while before and, seeing that they were on an upward trajectory, it would seem like anyone would regret missing the chance to see them at such a (relatively) tiny place before they got so big that they wouldn't play anywhere smaller than arenas. Ghazaleh was in, though, and I’d actually never before hung out with her aside from when we were in a group. After the $20 parking, we got our seats, which were near the back but on the floor; the Shrine is never too huge to not have a good seat anyway. We waited it out, sitting through Colin Stetson, some dude playing a bunch of instruments and not singing and generally making noise (urging Ghazelah to talk over him). It was a small price to pay for when the Arcade Fire took the stage. There isn't much I can say about the band’s concerts that hasn’t been said before (even by me): They’re one of the best live bands going and they have made some incredibly thrilling music (though occasionally inconsistent). They’re the kind of band making rapturous anthems that’s been lost in a world of rock bands who lost the nerve or didn’t have the talent in the first place and the indie bands who don’t have much interest in turning the volume up or connecting with the audience, much less the rest of the world. It’s a challenge for a band to make anthems that will actually be performed at a place large enough to accommodate an audience that has the volume and heart enough to fill the venue with the sound of voices singing along to those songs but the Arcade Fire broke through and they continued to go upwards from there. It wasn’t too much time after that that they won an Album of the Year Grammy and headlined Coachella, among other festivals. And I can say I saw them before they played stadiums.

Arcade Fire’s set-list:
"Ready to Start"
"Month of May"
"Neighborhood #2 (Laika)"
"No Cars Go"
"Haïti"
"Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)"
"Modern Man"
"Rococo"
"The Suburbs"
"The Suburbs (Continued)"
"Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)"
"Crown of Love"
"Deep Blue"
"Intervention"
"We Used to Wait"
"Neighborhood #3 (Power Out)"
"Rebellion (Lies)"

"Keep the Car Running"
"Wake Up"