Arcade Fire: Miroir Noir (dir. Vincent Morisset), Live at Lollapalooza Chicago 2017

Arcade Fire used to be an incendiary band, a once in a decade instance of a band that arrived perfectly formed upon their debut album, without an obvious predecessor, without even a whiff of corporate guidance or a all-seeing mentor lurking behind the scenes.  Like The Smiths and Suede before them, they knew exactly who they were upon arrival, didn't fit into any existing niche in indie rock, and yet managed to find a huge fanbase waiting for them who didn't even know what they were waiting for until they heard it.

Watch their performance from Lollapalooza 2017, and see that on any given night (or even most nights considering how good they are on stage), they can still be that incendiary band.  The talent is clearly there, their intensity and boundless energy on stage remains among the best in the world, and based on recent interviews, they still have the drive to succeed.  But perhaps it's never been easier to fool jaded fans like me into thinking they still have it, based on a nostalgia-heavy live show.  The Killers debuted in the same year as Arcade Fire and are the poster children for releasing three great albums and milking them ad infinitum.  They can headline wherever they want, play sets based around those three albums, and be certain of sending fans home happy, anything they've released in the past decade scarcely seems to matter in the big ticket selling picture. 

I hadn't seen "Miroir Noir" until now, and it's been surprisingly under-publicized over the years.  Admittedly, a documentary without a narrator, obvious story arc, and barely any dialogue can be a very tough sell.  It's shot almost entirely in sepia tones or antique-looking colour, and frequently resorts to odd, intrusive camera angles and the camera shakes or jitters with virtually all performance-based shots.  We get a fly on the wall view of the "Neon Bible" recording sessions, and a few representative on stage performances.  That's what passes for a story arc in "Miroir Noir", and the only commentary or sorts comes from the mostly crackpot calls to the 866 number that fans and interested parties could call to hear previews of the album prior to its release.  Despite all this, it's not a densely abstract art film because it's packed with incredible music that produce a string of memorable moments -- "Wake Up" played acoustically amongst fans on the floor of a concert hall, the elevator versions of "Windowsill" and "Neon Bible", the orchestral recording of "Intervention", and countless more.

Where did things start to go wrong? Ten years ago, didn't I review "The Suburbs" and praise them for embracing synths, taking cues from dance music, and hope they'd continue on that road in future albums?  I stand by those comments, while noting that there's a world of difference between a rock band recognizing and absorbing disco into their songs (e.g. Blondie) and concocting a fictional band name (The Reflektors) as part of a tongue in cheek promotional campaign while playing dress up on stage and encouraging audience members to do the same.  When you choose to work with trendy producers because you can, while retaining a pseudo-ironic detachment from the scene you're trying to glean inspiration from, then you're making "Emotional Rescue", not "Atomic".

Through their first three albums, nobody could ever accuse Arcade Fire of not being sincere, it was their most endearing quality.  Even their detractors knew that they *meant it* as much as any proverbial punk band ever had.  U2's "Pop" is now considered a mis-step, and three years later they reset themselves with "All That You Can't Leave Behind", signalling to any lapsed fans that the "real" U2 was back.  However, you can't say that they weren't all-in on that sound at the time -- "Zooropa" in 1993 further attests to this.  Arcade Fire feel like they hedged their bets before this phase even began.  If people liked "Reflektor" and "Everything Now" then great, and if not, they can reset and blame their critics for not understanding the subtext and laughing at the jokes.  Oh wait, they've already started doing this!

Most of all, their last two albums annoy me as a long time dance music fan for the same reasons that I used to rip on Radiohead twenty years ago.  Paranoia over a rapidly changing world, fear and distrust of technology, and criticism of consumer culture were already boring when Radiohead did it, and Arcade Fire have sadly taken many cues from them.  Both bands are also trying to tell us that electronic music is vacuous due to its mostly faceless, wordless nature, and only a rock band can enable such music to reach its true potential by adding conscious lyrics and guitars, thereby providing the music with a social context that was sorely missing until they came along.  Fuck all that.  What emotions do these bands always bring to the music?  Do they try to expand the palate of electronic music, and find new ways to express joy, rage, sadness, love, and all the other common themes in rock music?  No, they always loop back the stereotypes, i.e. they use cold, emotionless electronic music as a conduit to criticize cold, emotionless, uncaring, unsympathetic corporations and misusers of technology.

That said, "Everything Now" is an incredible song, and "Afterlife" shows that if you're going to blatantly copy, you might as well copy from the very best (New Order's "Temptation").  So I still have hope.   

The National - A Series of Exciting Communal Events

During the two months at home it was easy to lose track of what day it was.  However, I always knew which day was Monday because that was the day that the National would stream an Exciting Communal Event.  These concerts, mainly drawing from the band's nearly limitless supply of festival appearances, became a highlight of my week and helped keep me grounded to the idea of a normal life that would one day return.  Obviously plenty of other artists are doing similar things and connecting with their fans via their archive of live recordings or by livestreaming songs from their homes.  But the National's Exciting Communal Events were my favourite vice during the shutdown, and as a way to enjoy great music for two hours and reset one's brain for the coming week, I could find nothing better.  It certainly helped that the streams would go live at midnight my time, when the house was dark and quiet.  It was my secret, private portal into a world where real life can be suspended for happier reasons, and festivals can seem like the most important things happening in the world.  

The Exciting Communal Events will seemingly continue into the foreseeable future.  The National have headlined a couple of dozen festivals each year on their past few tours, so they're not going to run out of content.  Most importantly, the band are using these events to publicize a Gofundme to support their tour crew, and have also set up a separate fund to help their crew using profits from online merch sales.  It might be one or two years before concerts and festivals of this size can take place, so out of the millions of workers currently furloughed, they are among the last people who will get their jobs and normal lives back.  It's a great cause and I would encourage any National fan -- or fans of other bands organizing similar funding drives -- to donate and help out people who work so hard behind the scenes to stage these concerts.

So far there have been eight Exciting Communal Events, all of which are streamed at 5 PM EDT and then archived to the band's Youtube channel here.

High Violet Live from Brooklyn Academy May 15, 2010

This was directed by D.A. Pennebaker (one of his final works) and streamed live back in 2010 on the eve of the release of "High Violet".  At the time it probably blew a few minds and heralded a new era for the band.  Only bands that have "arrived" have their concerts professionally shot by a famous director in a beautiful theatre.  However, as a concert film it's nothing extraordinary, and the backstage stuff isn't particularly revealing, but that's partly because we've been spoiled by the volume of content that came afterward.

Live from Hurricane Festival June 21, 2013

The summer of 2013 was probably the last year you'll find them performing before sunset at a festival.  With only one hour allotted, they aim for highspots only by playing only fast, propulsive songs from their catalogue, with no ballads or slow passages.

  

Live from Primavera Sound, June 1, 2018

Live from Primavera Sound, May 30, 2014

This is clearly one of the band's favourite festivals.  Setlists from the "Sleep Well Beast" tours are always fantastic, and their 2018 appearance is no exception.  However, their 2014 appearance is more unique and fun.  The songs are played at noticeably faster tempos, with an energy and intensity beyond their typical gigs.  Matt Berninger seems tipsier than usual, and a few songs threaten to go careening off the edge into chaos, but the band somehow holds it together.  

Live from Ypsigrock, August 9, 2019

"I Am Easy To Find" drags in parts, weighed down by longer song lengths and experimental passages that don't always slick.  That problem extends to the resultant tour, but fans will still find plenty to like in this 2+ hour show in a beautiful Sicilian square. 

Guilty Party: Basilica Hudson

The band play on a circular stage encircled by a select number of fans.  This was a very special show in an intimate setting, featuring the entire "Sleep Well Beast" album played in order.  They are accompanied by a number of guests (Mouse on Mars, So Percussion, Nadia Sirota, Buke and Gase) who perform on the songs they collaborated on for the album.  There are no video screens or fancy lighting, just simple blue and red lights that dimly illuminate the stage, engulfing the band in an eerie glow as if they're playing under the moonlight.  The camera work is exquisite too, DVD quality work no doubt.  If you only have time to watch one Exciting Communal Event, and it's after midnight where you are, then this is the one to watch.  

Live from Pukkelpop, August 18, 2019

The band grabbed some headlines surrounding this gig by asking fans to choose the setlist.  Natually this meant that the set was skewed toward many older songs.  I wasn't as high on this concert as most people were -- The National don't have an exceptionally deep catalog, and all these older songs make frequent appearances in their sets even today, it's just rare to hear so many of them in the same set in 2019.  

Live from Best Kept Secret, June 9, 2018

The best of the lot in my opinion, and the impetus behind writing this post.  This show was readily available on youtube until about two months ago, leading many fans to speculate that it was intentionally removed so that the band could host it themselves, presumably in perpetuity, on their own channel.  Sure enough, here it is, pretty much the perfect National gig, with exceptional sound, a great crowd, and peak performances of almost every song.  This was my go-to concert for the band, and I know I'm not alone in calling it my favourite.   

If I had to put together a wishlist, I'd start with a full recording of the From the Artists Den show at Park Avenue Armory in May 2013.  Filmed right before the release of "Trouble Will Find Me", the fifty minute video currently available on youtube features a mix of live recordings and interviews, but surely a recording of the complete concert exists somewhere.  Playing in such a cavernous building produces an intimidating, dense wall of sound that I've never seen duplicated from any of their other gigs.  Or how about one of the "I Am Easy To Find" warm up gigs, with a parade of guest performers chosen according to the city they appeared in?  And what about some pre-2010 stuff? 

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Updated (May 31, 2020):

Just a few days after I posted this, they streamed the final Exciting Communal Event, and it was indeed quite the event.  They screened the complete "A Lot Of Sorrow", a collaboration between the National and Icelandic artist Ragnar Kjartansson, in which the band appeared on a stage at the MoMA in New York and played their song "Sorrow" repeatedly for six hours.  This was an exercise/endurance contest that spoke straight to my heart, making me think fondly of the days when I would occasionally experiment with my own sanity such as the time I listened to Rhythm and Sound's "See Mi Yah" continuously for 24 hours.

Unfortunately, the stream was not archived, likely because it's still an active exhibit in many modern art museums around the world.  But I was entranced by the hour or so that I saw.  Sadly, the band decided to put an end to these weekly events.  The pandemic seems to be far from over but many countries are opening up again whether the situation warrants it or not, and thus, perhaps it's best that the ECE's wrap up here, a shared experience confined to a specific time period in all of our lives.   

Florian Schneider RIP

There were a string of deaths in the music industry in the past month, including Little Richard and Dave Greenfield of the Stranglers.  But the passing of Florian Schneider was the most personally affecting for me.  He died as quietly and as privately as he lived.  We know he had a battle with cancer and little else.  How had he been passing his time since leaving Kraftwerk over a decade ago?  Nobody really knows.  And yet, the list of musicians who truly transformed music in multiple genres is a very short one, and Florian Schneider is on it. 

Is it wrong to be rankled by the obits who make note of the David Bowie song "V2 Schneider", as if he were a footnote in a song title by a more famous musician? 

Florian Schneider has died, but what is there to write about?  Kraftwerk were a monolithic entity, the individual contributions of the group members have been blurred out almost completely.  There are no amusing anecdotes about how Schneider composed a cool keyboard riff, about a song jelling in the studio, about life on the road.  It is assumed that he, along with Ralf Hutter, were the key creative forces in Kraftwerk, and indeed, the band hasn't released any new material since he left.  Kraftwerk and Hutter haven't said anything outside of a brutally dispassionate statement confirming his death, no personal remembrances, nothing.  The statement had all of the emotion of a company-wide email from the CEO's office, informing the masses of an unfortunate death within their ranks.  It was courteous and respectful, but gave no indication that they knew anything about the man other than what appeared in his employee file.

However, there's no indication that Schneider would have wanted it any other way.  He was an intensely private person when he was in Kraftwerk, and had ample time to set the record straight since leaving the band in 2008.  He could have written a book or started new collaborations but he didn't. It's a sad day for music, but music continues on exactly as it did before.