the 941

After the house lights went down, the first voice we heard was that of a televangelist, a pudgy whiteﾃつ�woman, her imageﾃつ�projected on elevated round panels set up on the concertﾃつ�stage.ﾃつ�She stalked back and forth from behind a pulpit, whipping her homeboundﾃつ�faithful into a frenzy. Asﾃつ�the televised preistessﾃつ�hammered homeﾃつ�her message, direct from God, The Arcade Fireﾃつ�walked onstage, andﾃつ�3,600 fans promptly went ape-shit.

The band was playing the third in a three-night stretch of gigs at The Chicago Theatre, all of them sold out well in advance, and, maybeﾃつ�playing up to the ornate and elegant venue, the group went all-out with the visuals. The bright lines of the cover ofﾃつ�Neon Bible were projected on a huge curtain in the background of the stage. Six neon bars rose from the front of the stage. And the instruments. No other band could possibly need as many to perform: A drum kit, a bass, guitars acoustic and electric,ﾃつ�a French horn, a baritone, a hurdy gurdy, keyboards, a second drum kit, a freakingﾃつ�churchﾃつ�organ.

The 10 members assumed their positions, although they didn’t remain fixed for very long. My wife Rachelﾃつ�and I had caught The Arcade Fire in concert before, at the 2005 Lollapalooza (oddly enough in this very same Chicago), and one of the joys of that hour was the constant movement.ﾃつ�Band membersﾃつ�dance like crazy, scream along to lead singer Win Butler even when there’s no mic nearby andﾃつ�toss instruments high above their heads, exuding on a nightly basisﾃつ�a passion, a commitment, a self-belief few rockﾃつ�bands ﾃ｢竄ｬ窶� indie or otherwise ﾃ｢竄ｬ窶� could ever summon once. See this band in action, and running a clip of a hyped-up televangelist as an intro suddenly makes a lot of sense.

With just two full-lengths ﾃ｢竄ｬ窶敕つ�2004’s debut, Funeral, and this year’sﾃつ�Neon Bible ﾃ｢竄ｬ窶敕つ�and oneﾃつ�early, self-titledﾃつ�EP under its belt, the band doesn’t have a huge back catalogue to draw from, so the set list was pretty predictable: Most of the new stuff with the choicest cuts from album number one thrown in. The audience knew it all: Only a handful of songs didn’t engender massive amounts of off-key singing-along.

Lead singer Win Butler didn’t chat much between songs, mentioning attending a couple White Sox-Cubs contests this weekend, the big interleague series that dominated sartorial choices all weekend in Chi-Town. Some dude kept inexplicably shouting “Detroit!” during the break. But Butler didn’t really need to say much, not when the group hits the exuberant “Lust for Life” rip that ends the song “Wake Up,” or when a goosebump-inducing organ surge introduces “Intervention,” or when he hops offstage and up an aisle, singing “Rebellion (Lies)” and receiving countless slaps on the back.

I mentioned motion before. Another thing that separates The Arcade Fire from the pack is the near-constant multi-tasking. More than half the band members repeatedly exchange instruments throughout. Regine Chassagne cranks the hurdy gurdy, pounds the organ andﾃつ�hits the skins for a couple songs.ﾃつ�Richard Reed Parry seemsﾃつ�hardly able toﾃつ�make it through one tune without grabbing a second noisemaker. And the crowd moves right along with them. Hipsters did their hurky-jerky flailing hipster dances. An old golf shirt-clad guy sauntered up and down the aisles like it was Grand Funk Railroad all over again.ﾃつ�Even I ﾃ｢竄ｬ窶敕つ�so perennially awkwardﾃつ�thatﾃつ�dancing in a crowd scaresﾃつ�the bejesus out of me ﾃ｢竄ｬ窶敕つ�couldn’t help myself from hopping up and down. The band is infectious: ferociously sincere, arty without pretension, totally committed.

This band makes dorks out of us. Here I sit, after midnight, with a wake-up coming at 7 a.m., on vacation, posting about the show. My over-21 wristband encircles my right arm, and ﾃ｢竄ｬ窶敕つ�for the first time since I was teenager ﾃ｢竄ｬ窶� I never want to cut the thing off.ﾃつ�After the show ended,ﾃつ�I made my wife spend a half-hourﾃつ�waiting in the foggy, foot-numbingﾃつ�40-degree cold of a late spring chill, trying to merely catch a glimpseﾃつ�of the band exiting into an alleyway. So much has been written about the tyrrany of irony, about the plague ofﾃつ�scenesterism, about peopleﾃつ�pretending to like shit they never really did. Well, we have one band that smashesﾃつ�all thoseﾃつ�debates to pieces. To see them is to love them.

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