At this point you might be sick of hearing about how great Arcade Fire is. Your uncle that tries to relate to you at Christmas now listens to them and maybe even your little cousin too. You feel like they’ve lost some of their “coolness” because they’re a big mainstream band playing arenas and amphitheaters across the world while you fondly remember listening to Funeral and Neon Bible and seeing them at small clubs like the Paradise. At this point they’re touring behind their biggest record to date, viagra order (which is absolutely phenomenal even if you won’t say that out loud to your friends) and they’re rolling back through your neck of the woods. Screw that, for sale it’s $90 for a decent seat, let the Yuppie scum soak it up.
Even if that might have been your attitude when Reflektor came out early this year, every time a new headline popped up about what on stage antics or covers they were breaking out night after night, must have wore you down a bit. And as the tour crept closer and closer, you couldn’t help but admit the relayed images of the shows appeared as a visual spectacle you started to think you might not want to miss.
Then about a week before TheReflektors (the imaginary band Arcade Fire has become for this tour) were to roll through Mansfield Ma, the ticket wrangling second-market brokers that gobbled up all of chunks tickets had a major meltdown and there were a flurry of extra tickets being tossed around for either short money, or no money at all. What happened next was a mad rush of people who were once “too cool” for Arcade Fire, filled up the Xfinity Center and were mesmerized by their 20 song, career spanning set, all-star display of showmanship, and top-notch big concert production. The Arcade Fire wins again.
Opening the show with the Jurassic Park theme song segwayed into Rebellion (Lies) over the PA, the audience was introduced to the bobble-head puppets that would make appearances throughout the night. The caricatures are essentially the Reflektor band construed for the tour. Each band member has their own reflected image made up from a puppet-head that I could only help but wonder was inspired by the Bread and Puppet Theatre Co. of Vermont and possibly stems back to some of Winn Butler’s New England Roots. Either way, between the puppetry and the most stellar light show I have seen this summer, the stage was vibrant and full of life.
The show opened with the three chord stomp-box rocker “Normal Person.” Then after “Joan of Arc” they went through a score of songs from your beloved early material. “The Suburbs,” “Ready to Start,” “Neighborhood #1” and eventually “No Cars Go” all transcended the old Arcade Fire aesthetic that these songs seemed to be made of but fit perfectly with a big arena-rock sound. “We Exist” and “Reflektor” showed off the band’s newer, more dancey, vibe but melded perfectly with “Haiti” in between. They began to explore some stage theatrics as a human disco-ball of sorts popped up in the middle of the crowd on a riser and slowly moved to reflect the band’s stellar light show right back at them. “Afterlife” was an emotional progressive dance tune that brought the lights and hexagonal mirrors down to cover the band like a low ceiling. The theatrical-side of Arcade Fire continued with “It’s Never Over (Hey Morpheus)” when multi-instrumentalist Regine Chassagne appeared on the same mini stage in the middle of the crowd with a skeleton dressed dancer mocking her every staccato move. As they closed with “Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)” they had a clear emotional grip over the audience.
The encore played out more like a monstrous second set, with the Reflektor puppet band returning first along with Boston’s “More than a feeling” tracked over them. This was teased out as a joke as Winn and co. butted them aside to reclaim their instruments and broke into their geographical cover of the Pixie’s “Alex Eiffel.” They followed with a huge ragged out reggae-rocker “Here Comes the Night Time,” with a confetti and streamer explosion, then steam-rolled “Neighborhood #3 (Power Out).” Of course they closed out the show, and possibly opened up the gates of rock heaven, with the epic “Wake Up” which left me with wave of end of the summer nostalgia washing over me.
People can say what they want about Arcade Fire. Now that they are this big, everyone who was there buying records and seeing them at smaller venues along the way may feel a small piece of ownership that they feel they don’t get credit for now that they are so big. In the end though, everyone who should have been at this show was there; right where they should be. It’s a transition for a fan to go from loving a small band to loving a big band, but because the Arcade Fire has become such a special rock n’ roll orchestra and has the imagery dictate what they want to create with any setting, they make it easy for you to fall in love with them again. On top of all of that their material, even the older stuff, just feels like it was made and meant to be played in these big arenas. In a musical age where some artists and bands get cannoned to the next level, the Arcade Fire plays with a gusto like they should have been there all along, and I’m willing to go for the ride just to see what they’ll do next.
