Neither David Byrne nor David Bowie were there, but The Arcade Fire put on a terrific show tonight at the Roxy. How strange that the only other time I’d been there (Flaming Lips), there ended up being a parade of some sort marching through the crowd. That’s the way tonight’s show ended, finally, with the band snaking their way through the crowd after over an hour and a half of the most energetic, anthemic, inspiring music. My first time seeing them, and from right up front, I was completely dumbfounded from the opening chords of “Wake Up.” It was a the kind of moment that made you say to yourself, “This might be the best band in the world, right now, at this moment, as they’re all playing their hearts out and the whole crowd is ‘aaaaah’ing along with them.” At least that’s what I was thinking.

They played every song on “Funeral,” plus one new song, as well as “No Cars Go” (already covered by Final Fantasy, otherwise known as Owen Pallett, who did a great job opening for the band and assisted ably on violin and general knavery throughout the show; he gets the award for best song title: “The CN Tower Belongs to the Dead”). They also played a cover of the Magnetic Fields’ “Born on a Train.” Not only did they play their instruments, but they did about everything else you might imagine: some dancing, some miming, some motorcycle-helmet-wearing, and a lot of instrument-switching.



The band seemed in good spirits, and we got lots of stories from Win about living in a dump in Cambridge, working at Vintage etc. in Porter Square (where Win first heard the MF song), and how Montreal stole the sound woman from the Middle East. Everyone seemed to know the words, at least the kids from Harvard and Williams and NYU and the Gilmore Girls (yes, there was a hip mom/hip daughter pairing there, and yes I just made that reference), who collectively made up the people whose conversations I heard as we stood waiting for the show to begin.



Does Richard get lots of “Napoleon Dynamite” comparisons? The good-naturedly drunk guy next to me yelled it out twice and got flipped off both times, with a look that said “I’d kick you if I were close enough.”

Note Win’s unorthodox guitar technique, having broken the strings on a bass and a guitar during the course of the night: