Artist: Arcade Fire
Bio
Arcade Fire is an orchestral indie rock band which formed in Montreal, Quebec, Canada in 2003. The band consists of Win Butler (vocals, guitar, piano), Régine Chassagne (vocals, accordion, keyboards, hurdy gurdy, drums), Richard Reed Parry (bass, guitar), William Butler (keyboards, guitar), Tim Kingsbury (bass), Sarah Neufeld (violin), and Jeremy Gara (drums). Howard Bilerman, who played drums on the album Funeral, has since moved on to other projects. Montreal percussionist Dane Mills performed on the EP and in early live shows. As of May 2005, the touring band includes horn player Pietro Amato (who is in Bell Orchestre and Torngat) and violinist Owen Pallett. Pallett has also opened for their shows, appearing as the one-man band Final Fantasy.
The band’s trademark fashion is the waistcoat, giving them an air of "frumpiness". When asked about the rumour that the band's name refers to a fire in an arcade, Win Butler replied: "It's not a rumour, it's based on a story that someone told me. It's not an actual event, but one that I took to be real. I would say that it's probably something that the kid made up, but at the time I believed him." Win Butler and his brother Will grew up in Texas.
Band formation
Arcade Fire formed around the husband and wife duo of Win Butler and Régine Chassagne. Joining together as recently as mid-2003, the current line-up solidified in late 2003/early 2004, when their first full-length album Funeral was recorded. Before this an eponymous EP (often referred to by fans as the Us Kids Know EP) had been sold at early shows. The EP was subsequently remastered and given a full release once the band started becoming more prominent. Arcade Fire are known for their enthralling live performances, as well as its use of a large number of musical instruments. In addition to mainstays guitar, drums, and bass guitar, members play piano, violin, viola, cello, double bass, xylophone, keyboard, French horn, accordion, and harp. With several able musicians, the band take most of their instrumental diversity on tour and members switch instrumental duties throughout their shows. The number of instruments, along with a wide set of musical influences has provided a substantial number of resources on which to draw from during the recording
More at Last.fm
Concert Dates
| Date | City | Venue | Tickets | ||
| Feb 08 |
Winston-Salem NC |
Ziggy's |
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| Feb 17 |
Washington DC |
U Street Music Hall |
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| Mar 28 |
Salt Lake City UT |
Urban Lounge |
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| May 03 |
Philadelphia PA |
Union Transfer |
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| May 31 |
Toronto ON |
Roy Thomson Hall |
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News
Gig review: Arcade Fire - The Scotsman
Live Review: Arcade Fire - NME (Reviews)
Arcade Fire - St. Louis Riverfront Times (Event)
Video: Arcade Fire – “The Suburbs” - MBV Music
Director's Cut: Arcade Fire: "We Used to Wait" - Pitchfork - News
From Sean Paul's "Gimme the Light" to Genesis' "Land of Confusion", great music videos are bursts of sound and vision that leave an indelible impression. Director's Cut is a Pitchfork News feature in which we chat with music video directors about their creations. The men and women behind the camera are often overlooked in today's YouTube era, but this feature aims to highlight their hard work while showcasing the best videos currently linking around the internet. A little behind-the-scenes dirt couldn't hurt, too.
Arcade Fire's "We Used to Wait" is a different type of music-video experience. It's one that you can only watch on a computer (and a high-functioning computer at that), but more importantly, one that brings the viewer's own childhood associations into the work. "We Used to Wait", which you can watch here, uses Google Street View images of your first house, turning old memories inside-out and drawing them into a series of images that won't leave your head anytime soon. Simply from a technological standpoint, it's pretty staggering, and it suggests lots of future possibilities for the medium. But it's also a fiercely affecting piece of art, the sort of thing that can send your brain down all kinds of rabbit holes.
Director Chris Milk has been responsible for plenty of memorable clips in the past, like Kanye West's "Touch the Sky" and Gnarls Barkley's "Who's Gonna Save My Soul?", but he's never done anything quite like this before. We talked with Milk over email about the ideas and challenges involved in putting a work like this together.
Video: Arcade Fire – “Ready to Start” - MBV Music
Video: Arcade Fire: "Ready to Start" - Pitchfork - News
Arcade Fire are in total world-conqueror mode these days-- hitting number one with their BNM'ed new album The Suburbs, reducing Jon Stewart to a pile of goo, and headlining massive venues everywhere they go. (The Suburbs is currently sitting pretty at number two on the Billboard 200, selling 52,000 copies in its second week.)
The artfully shot black-and-white new video for the Suburbs jam "Ready to Start" focuses on the band at work in one of those huge venues, giving the band's rampaging, huger-than-life live show the cinematic treatment it demands. Watch it below, via Some Kind of Awesome.
Arcade Fire: "Ready to Start" - Pitchfork (Upcoming releases)
Arcade Fire are in total world-conqueror mode these days-- hitting number one with their BNM'ed new album The Suburbs, reducing Jon Stewart to a pile of goo, and headlining massive venues everywhere they go. (The Suburbs is currently sitting pretty at number two on the Billboard 200, selling 52,000 copies in its second week.)
The artfully shot black-and-white new video for the Suburbs jam "Ready to Start" focuses on the band at work in one of those huge venues, giving the band's rampaging, huger-than-life live show the cinematic treatment it demands. Watch it below, via Some Kind of Awesome.
Arcade Fire, We Used To Wait Single Review - Contact Music (Reviews)
Seriously, not a single interesting thing happens in the five minutes this track rudely steals from
Arcade Fire, 'The Suburbs' (Merge) - Spin (reviews)
On an album full of moments when hope turns haunting, the ghosts hang heaviest on the spellbinding "Suburban War," which comes roughly halfway through Arcade Fire's blazingly intense third album. Against solemn ringing guitar, Win Butler sings about a man remembering an old friend. Once, the two grew their hair long and vowed to escape, past the fences and pavement, to a place where they could battle on behalf of what was pure. Years pass in a shiver of violin and piano, and now they find themselves fighting different wars. The old friend cuts his hair, then disappears. A martial beat pounds. Butler's voice trembles, the song steels itself in double-time, and the man peers into the window of every passing car, looking for his old friend's face, doomed to seek a lost connection. Two lives become shining beacons, distant stars.
If Arcade Fire's ragtag debut, Funeral, found its ecstatic force by celebrating the elusive comforts of community (hence four songs with the word neighborhood in the title), and 2007's aggrieved, galvanizing Neon Bible powered forth in opposition to the hollow sparkle of church, state, and celebrity, then the harder, denser The Suburbs burns on behalf of the belief that modern culture is missing its heart -- and to give up the search is to send one's soul to oblivion.
Or, in Suburbs speak, to the Sprawl, where everything is connected but nothing ever touches. The deceptively easygoing title track opens things on a bouncy base of acoustic guitar and piano, as Butler, his resolute howl shaded with emotions absent from his younger self's wounded yelp, struggles against self-doubt ("Sometimes I can't believe it / I'm moving past the feeling") and the suspicious, show-me stance of the kids who wanna be so hard.
Those kids return as cynical art schoolers in "Ready to Start," warning Butler that businessmen will drink his blood, their own vampirism made seductive by a throbbing, death-wish bass line and rush of clanging guitar. Things downshift on the third track, "Modern Man," a gentle folk-rock ramble outfitted with glassy keyboard shudders that gradually evolve into majestic arabesques on the subsequent "Rococo," where modern kids build things up just to burn them down and the world crumbles in a craggy guitar solo.
This is a bigger, more byzantine Arcade Fire. Words that serve as master keys in one lyric become hushed whispers in another. Looped sounds of lonely traffic and needles stuck in endless grooves act as segues. "Jumping Jack Flash" echoes in the clarion-call guitars of "City With No Children" while the rapturous "Half Light II (No Celebration)" resounds with "Baba O'Riley" piano chords. Safety-pin punk and campfire folk share space on the punch-caress combo of "Month of May" and "Wasted Hours." Butler's consumptive croon in "Sprawl I (Flatland)" is rejuvenated by Régine Chassagne's seraphic wail on "Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)." There are no wrong turns.
Radiant with apocalyptic tension and grasping to sustain real bonds, The Suburbs extends hungrily outward, recalling the dystopic miasma of William Gibson's sci-fi novels and Sonic Youth's guitar odysseys. Desperate to elude its own corrosive dread, it keeps moving, asking, looking, and making the promise that hope isn't just another spiritual cul-de-sac. After all, you never know who might be coming in the next car.
Arcade Fire — The Suburbs - ChartAttack (Reviews)
So here we are, after two months of hype and glowing concert reviews, listening to Arcade Fire's third studio record for the first time. Or rather, listening for a while, then stopping, then listening again and probably finishing.
The Suburbs is as sprawling as its namesake, with 16 tracks clocking in at more than 63 minutes. The BBC review for the record preposterously asserts that it is better than OK Computer (because the British music press has been waiting 12 years for someone turn that trick, U.K. journos are overly willing to print that statement for anyone at this point). But the only Radiohead record that comes to mind when I hear The Suburbs is In Rainbows, and that's because our beloved Montrealers missed a massive opportunity when tracking this record.
But first things first: there's not a single bad cut on the album. That's not to say they're all great, but I'll get to that in a minute. The peaks, however, solidly fulfill Funeral's impossible promise. "Ready To Start," "Rococo" and the title track are haunting and uplifting all at the same time. "Month Of May" and "Half Light II (No Celebration)" are unrelenting, powerful tunes. Some of the songs in between — "We Used To Wait" and "Modern Man," for example — come close to matching the record's true, aforementioned highs. Others, including "Deep Blue" and "Suburban War," are pleasant filler.
But that's the rub: there is filler here, and that prevents The Suburbs from reaching its true potential. I get that if you're only going to put out a record every three years, you'd like your fans to get more bang for their buck. As Radiohead proved with In Rainbows and its accompanying EP, both feats are possible. A record should stand as a more concise statement with a coherent narrative. In Rainbows does, and The Suburbs does not. It's as simple as that. If you have extra parts, throw them on an EP. Don't let them muck up your final product.
Thankfully, in our digital world, this is entirely possible. Playlist it like this: cut "Wasted Hours," "Deep Blue," "Suburban War" and both parts of "The Sprawl," keep the coda and, voila: The Suburbs, the way it should have been. Listen to the other five tracks on their own when you get bored of the best (imaginary) LP of the year, because they're not bad — they just don't belong.
Get it from 
The Suburbs by Arcade Fire - ArtistDirect
Arcade Fire, The Suburbs Album Review - Contact Music (Reviews)
Three years is a long time in music; just ask the likes of Mika, Klaxons or Kanye West, all of whom
Arcade Fire - The Suburbs - Pitchfork (New Albums)
When Arcade Fire turned the all-or-nothing intensity of Funeral outward on Neon Bible, otherwise propulsive songs were bogged down by the occasional overblown arrangement or pedantic political statement. You'd figure an album bluntly called The Suburbs that focuses on The Way We Live might repeat some of Neon Bible's worst tendencies. Instead, it's a satisfying return to form, proof that Arcade Fire can still make grand statements without sounding like they're carrying the weight of the world. The bulk of The Suburbs focuses on quiet desperation borne of compounding the pain of wasting your time as an adult by romanticizing the wasted time of your youth. But as bleak as the lyrics are, they're buoyed by the band's leanest, loosest songwriting yet.
Arcade Fire - "Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)" - Pitchfork (New Tracks)
The protagonist in "Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)", the penultimate track from the Arcade Fire's forthcoming third full-length, The Suburbs, is dissatisfied. Dissatisfaction isn't a new theme for these guys; Funeral dealt with the seething angst that comes from personal loss, while the band ground its gears against Big World Problems on Neon Bible. However, the voice on "Sprawl II" comes straight from adolescent suburbia (fittingly), a mindset and location where one can feel trapped. Régine Chassagne, in a powerful vocal turn, captures teenage good times ("We rode our bikes/ To the nearest park/ Sat under the swings and kissed in the dark"), and edge-of-adulthood bad times ("They heard me singing, and they told me to stop/ Quit these pretentious things and just punch the clock").
These sentiments are prime material for the chugging, anthemic rock that the Arcade Fire have made their name on, which makes the song's beating disco pulse a glorious change-up for the band and its fans. There have been a few comparisons to Blondie's "Heart of Glass" tossed around, and the band themselves have claimed Depeche Mode as a major influence for The Suburbs as a whole. Indeed, you can hear a lot of the former in "Sprawl II"'s winding synth line and insistent beat, but considering the subject matter, the song has a lot in common with New Order's own teenage electro-fantasias as well. Influences aside, "Sprawl II" is the latest engaging missive from a band that continues to evolve while remaining true to their own hearts.
[from The Suburbs; out 08/03/10 via Merge]
Video: Arcade Fire – MSG Concert Webcast Promo - MBV Music
Arcade Fire – The Suburbs - MBV Music
Arcade Fire – The Suburbs
Out 8/3 on Merge
CD • 2xLP • MP3
Pre-order The Suburbs on CD or 2xLP at Merge, ...
[Click through to continue reading this post]
Stream: Arcade Fire – “The Suburbs” Single (Official “Non-Radio Rip”) - MBV Music
Stream Arcade Fire’s “The Suburbs” single — the official not-just-ripped-from-radio version — at ArcadeFire.Com
Arcade Fire Return to the Stage - Pitchfork - News
Photo by Kathryn Yu
It's been too long since we've heard a massed army of Amish-dressed Canadians belting out towering anthems on stage. But this summer, we're in luck. Arcade Fire have been laying low for a little while now, working on a new album, but they'll make their grand return to festival stages in this year's warmer months. They've announced a few shows so far, and it seems pretty likely that we'll know about more shortly.
Alongside Pavement, Weezer, the National, Robyn, Jamie Lidell, the Black Keys, and more, Arcade Fire will perform at Montreal's Osheaga Festival, which will happen July 31 - August 1. Various sources report that they'll also take part in Quebec City's Festival d'été de Québec, which takes over the picturesque city July 8-18, but that hasn't been confirmed yet.
They've also got a few overseas shows on the calendar. They'll play Ireland's Oxegen Festival, which comes to the city of Naas July 9-11, and also includes Vampire Weekend, Hot Chip, Eminem, Goldfrapp, and more. They'll do Arendal, Norway's Hove Festival, which happens June 29 - July 2, along with Beach House, Them Crooked Vultures, Massive Attack, Neon Indian, and more. And on July 4, they'll hit Belgium's Rock Werchter, along with the xx, LCD Soundsystem, Pearl Jam, and more.
No U.S. shows announced yet, but Arcade Fire are widely rumored to headline this year's Lollapalooza alongside a reunited Soundgarden, Green Day, Lady Gaga, and the Strokes.
Arcade Fire:
07-02 Arendal, Norway - Hove Festival
07-04 Werchter, Belgium - Rock Werchter Festival
07-09-11 Naas, Ireland - Oxegen Festival
07-31 - 08-01 Montreal, Quebec - Osheaga Festival
Arcade Fire to Cover Peter Gabriel's "Games Without Frontiers" - Pitchfork - News
Arcade Fire photo by Kathryn Yu
Peter Gabriel's album Scratch My Back, in which he covers songs by Arcade Fire, Bon Iver, David Bowie, Lou Reed, Magnetic Fields, Radiohead, and more, is out today in the U.S. As previously reported, Gabriel is preparing a companion volume called I'll Scratch Yours, in which the artists Gabriel tackled on Scratch My Back cover songs from Gabriel's own back catalogue. We've heard Stephin Merritt's take on "Not One of Us", and Thom Yorke's version of "Wallflower" is allegedly in the works, though that seems to be progressing slowly. Paul Simon's cover of "Biko" is out now.
Yesterday, The New York Times reported that Arcade Fire is "working on" a cover of "Games Without Frontiers", from Gabriel's 1980 solo album. Take a listen to the original below, and imagine how it would sound with Win Butler or Régine Chassagne singing:
UPDATE: Arcade Fire NOT Covering Peter Gabriel's "Games Without Frontiers" - Pitchfork - News
Arcade Fire photo by Kathryn Yu
UPDATE: According to Arcade Fire's publicist, The New York Times incorrectly reported that the band is covering "Games Without Frontiers". The band is not covering that song. It is unclear if they are covering another Peter Gabriel song or not participating in the project at all.
Peter Gabriel's album Scratch My Back, in which he covers songs by Arcade Fire, Bon Iver, David Bowie, Lou Reed, Magnetic Fields, Radiohead, and more, is out today in the U.S. As previously reported, Gabriel is preparing a companion volume called I'll Scratch Yours, in which the artists Gabriel tackled on Scratch My Back cover songs from Gabriel's own back catalogue. We've heard Stephin Merritt's take on "Not One of Us", and Thom Yorke's version of "Wallflower" is allegedly in the works, though that seems to be progressing slowly. Paul Simon's cover of "Biko" is out now.
Yesterday, The New York Times reported that Arcade Fire is "working on" a cover of "Games Without Frontiers", from Gabriel's 1980 solo album. Take a listen to the original below, and imagine how it would sound with Win Butler or Régine Chassagne singing:
Arcade Fire and Jonathan Demme Haiti Documentary Stalled by Earthquake - Pitchfork - News
Arcade Fire's connection to Haiti runs deep, and the band has been active in raising funds for and awareness of the devastation wrought by the country's mid-January earthquake. According to director Jonathan Demme (Stop Making Sense, Silence of the Lambs, various Neil Young projects), the band and Demme were planning on filming a documentary in Haiti this year, but the earthquake thwarted their plans.
Demme told The Boston Phoenix (via the Playlist), "I was heading for Haiti last Friday with the band Arcade Fire. We were going to do a music driven, kind of music documentary, against a backdrop of carnival in Jacmel-- the great, now devastated, south coast Haitian city. We had our final conference call the morning of the day the quake struck. We were gonna go down anyway until we realized we can't really get there. My personal feeling was, those who go down two months or three months from now, with a specific mission in mind, will be valuable in their own way, as the people that are going now. So I'm gonna go. I'm gonna go within the next six months, but I haven't been yet."
Demme also has experience in Haiti. In 2003, he released the film The Agronomist, about the Haitian journalist and activist Jean Dominique.
Arcade Fire License "Wake Up" to Super Bowl to Benefit Haiti Relief - Pitchfork - News
Arcade Fire's "Wake Up" is built for large, communal experiences in stadiums. The Super Bowl is a pretty large, communal experience that happens to take place in a stadium.
But don't freak when you hear the Funeral anthem at some point during this Sunday's Super Bowl XLIV telecast. The group has teamed up with the NFL and charity Partners in Health to air "Wake Up" during the big game with all proceeds from the licensing going to help Haiti relief efforts.
So feel free to sing along without feeling dirty and compromised. Win-win.
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