i read on AtEase Colin and Ed (both Radiohead) were there as well :wideeyed:

everyone likes AF!!

 

Thom was suspossed to go too.

I think they do! It makes me so happy! :D I love it when I meet someone who hasn't heard of them and I get the chance to introduce their music...it's great

ARCADE FIRE BACK IN THE SPOTLIGHT

 

Arcade Fire's first album, Funeral, won international critical acclaim and admiration from superstars including David Bowie and Coldplay's Chris Martin.

 

But as the band prepares to release its much-anticipated second disc, there are few signs of celebrity excess. Group members Will Butler and Jeremy Gara point to a pair of used cars as the extent of their recent rock-star splurges.

 

And the affable pair profess surprise at the ballyhoo surrounding Neon Bible.

 

"It's not like we've earned or deserved anything,'' says Butler, younger brother to front man Win.

 

"If 50 people buy the record, you're like, 'Oh, great.' And if 300,000 buy the record it's like, 'Oh. That's weird. But great.' It's all bonus. As long as you don't depend on your bonus, the fates won't kick you in the crotch.

 

Until recently, the pair insist they've been oblivious to the fansites and rock zines that are overrun with anticipation over the Montreal band's sophomore effort.

 

When Arcade Fire announced a string of shows in New York and London churches and a Montreal community centre to preview the new material, they sold out in mere minutes, with desperate fans paying as much as $250 a ticket to scalpers.

 

"We got all these angry e-mails: 'How come your shows aren't bigger?''' Butler says of the five hometown shows that were set to kick off Tuesday night.

 

"Dude, we don't know how to play the songs, you don't want to see us yet!''

 

He promises bigger shows to follow in the spring and summer to support the newest batch of euphoric anthems that make up Neon Bible.

 

Recorded last year in Montreal, New York, London and Budapest, the album is due out March 6 but is already seducing eager fans who've scored previews through secret shows and album leaks.

 

Butler shrugs aside the unauthorized previews, passed from friend to friend to friend much the same way Funeral slowly made its way from the grassroots onto music hotlists across the globe.

 

The band's new material remains true to their established whims for orchestrated clatter and shouts, but its predecessor's success means a few more bells and whistles, Gara says.

 

This time around, for example, members indulged in obscure instruments such as a hurdy gurdy from Austria and a custom bass steel drum from Trinidad.

 

"There's a little more resources at our disposal and money behind us and stuff like that,'' he notes.

 

"It was like, 'Oh, I've always wanted to play this weird instrument, let's get it. Let's put it on the record somewhere."'

 

But that's the extent of the extravagant whims, adds Gara, who cringes at the idea of becoming a celebrity.

 

"You won't catch us doing an interview on ETalk Daily, because it's like, why propagate that? It's horrible,'' he says, noting that early on, the band turned down huge stadium concerts with acts like R.E.M. so they could headline their own shows.

 

"We don't need to do that. We can do what we do and people will connect and that's really the luckiest part of it all. It's pretty amazing.''

 

http://www.therecord.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=record/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1170888616353&call_pageid=1024322089000&col=1024322319351

THE NEW ALBUM!!!!!!!!!!

how come i didnt heard about that yet???

im so not in touch with the world :disappointed:

 

edit :

downloading right now!!

thanks for the links im so haaaaaaaaapppyyyyyyyyyy :dance:

Hui besides Bloc Party, Incubus and Pearl Jam, Arcade Fire is also coming to the Hurricane Festival which is only 1 hour away from home. :dance:

 

http://www.hurricane.de

any b side from the arcade fire? anyone got it? please upload.

 

thanks

The heat begins to rise

 

Arcade Fire fans its red-hot flames with a new CD and perhaps its final small-venue shows

 

MONTREAL -- From the moment that its 2004 debut Funeral catapulted Arcade Fire from local club heroes to international indie rock phenoms, the Montreal band has constantly adjusted to the shifting realities imposed by its sudden popularity.

 

"During the Funeral tour," recalls guitarist/percussionist Will Butler, "it seemed like every week was a transition. We started playing for 50 people. Then it was 100. Then 200, then 400, then 800, then 1,600, then 3,200."

 

In that sense, the five-night, hometown residency that wrapped up last night at the Ukrainian National Federation, a 650-seat community centre located in the city's downtown, was an arrangement of choice rather than a matter of necessity. Arcade Fire is more than plenty big enough in Montreal – and a lot of other places – to have graduated to larger venues.

 

Not only were all five shows sold out, desperate fans huddled overnight outside a local CD store, in temperatures approaching -20C, to lay their hands on one of the 50 tickets set aside for sale on the morning of each show. The record shop initiative aimed to keep a lid on potentially extortionist prices demanded by scalpers, but that didn't prevent at least one pair of $25 tickets from being sold for 10 times its $50 face value on eBay.

 

More of the same can be expected this week when Arcade Fire launches another sold-out-in-advance, five-night stand at the 400-seat Judson Memorial Church in New York's Greenwich Village.

 

The venues are small partly because Arcade Fire views these gigs, along with a previous run of comparatively intimate shows that received rave reviews in the U.K., as a touring equivalent of spring training.

 

The set list leans heavily toward the new Neon Bible – a sequel to the half-million-plus-selling Funeral – due out March 6. The music is demanding and the band is still working out the kinks before heading back to Europe next month and then returning in April to California's Coachella music festival, where the group performed for an estimated crowd of 15,000 last year.

 

Coachella and other outdoor music festivals aside, Arcade Fire still doesn't see itself as an arena act – even if a show at Montreal's Bell Centre, home of the Canadiens, is theoretically within its grasp.

 

Although nothing is official, Massey Hall is said to be the Toronto stop on a yet-to-be-announced North American tour.

 

"It's a question of balance," says Butler, during an interview, alongside Régine Chassagne, a multi-instrumentalist and singer who fronts the band with Win Butler, who is both Chassagne's husband and Will's brother.

 

"You want to fit as many people in as want to see you, but you also don't want to play the Bell Centre," he continues. "It's not the greatest ambience. So you end up playing more nights in a smaller venue like a nice theatre, but then you don't get to as many places. You end up playing three nights in Chicago, instead of one night in Chicago and another in Champlain."

 

Adds Chassagne: "I don't know if it would actually help for people to see us in a gigantic venue, where we would look like ants and you can't really hear much.

 

"Would that be better?" she asks, imagining herself as a member of the audience. "I don't know. I wouldn't like it."

 

The irony, perhaps, is that if any band seems built for a big podium it is Arcade Fire. During last week's Montreal shows, the stage was barely big enough to accommodate the musicians and their instruments. The group's core membership – also including Richard Reed Parry, Tim Kingsbury, Sarah Neufeld and Jeremy Gara – ballooned to 10 with the addition of a two-member horn section and a second string player.

 

The performances were characteristically exuberant, with band members wailing away with customary abandon on instruments freely traded between them. At Wednesday's show, the audience responded with particular enthusiasm during a mid-set revival of barnstorming anthems from the half-million selling Funeral, while also heartily endorsing the newer material.

 

On that night, the title track from Neon Bible was saved for the end of the second encore, presumably in the hopes that the down-tempo number would dampen the raucous and apparently tireless crowd's demand for more. It didn't work. Fans kept chanting and clapping long after the house lights came up, the crew began clearing the stage and, finally, recorded music was turned on.

 

It's possible the audience was reluctant to leave until they were treated to the kind of signature, show-ending finale for which Arcade Fire is known. In 2005, for instance, the band concluded a show at the Danforth Music Hall by exiting up the aisle and busking on the sidewalk outside.

 

"You should be pleased when things like that happen," Butler says. "But you shouldn't expect them to happen."

 

Besides, on Wednesday the wrinkle came at the start of the show when the young daughter of a friend opened the proceedings by reciting a passage from "The Wolf and the Fox," the 17th-century French fable that inspired one of Neon Bible's 11 tracks, "The Well and the Lighthouse."

 

The new album, which will be released as a regular CD, a deluxe CD with a 32-page booklet and a double LP, was recorded throughout 2006, mostly in a small church outside of Montreal but also in London, New York and Budapest, where orchestral passages arranged by violinist and band friend Owen Pallett, of Final Fantasy, were tracked.

 

Generally, the sonic canvas is even busier than it was on Funeral, the album which earned the band its reputation as purveyors of elaborate chamber pop, bolstered by strings, horns and booming backing vocal choruses. "No Cars Go," a song which originally appeared on an early EP, has been reworked for the new album to reflect its evolution as a long-standing staple of the live show.

 

"I always had an orchestra in my mind from the conception of that song. I always heard it like that in my mind," says Chassagne, who creates the skeletal frameworks for the songs with Win Butler before inviting input from the rest of the band.

 

"But there was no way we could have done it like that back then. I was using the accordion to imitate the strings, but I imagined it with an orchestra. Then it became an option and I wanted to do it."

 

Chassagne, even more than most of her bandmates, seems to revel in her role as an interchangeable musical part. A backing and sometimes lead vocalist, she started Wednesday's gig behind the drum kit before turning to the keyboards, the accordion and her current infatuation, the hurdy gurdy, a stringed instrument with a crank at one end.

 

"It's still new for me," she says with obvious relish. "When you're playing it, it feels like you're playing a cranking keytar. And it sounds like a bagpipe violin.

 

"It's very high maintenance, especially the way that I use it. I treat it pretty rough."

 

Not as roughly as percussion instruments are handled by other band members, who occasionally bash maniacally at anything within striking distance. In performance, Arcade Fire doesn't so much play their instruments as play with them, sometimes with little apparent regard for the niceties of note-perfect execution.

 

"There's a long and fruitful history in rock 'n' rock of not being able to play your instrument," Butler says. "This isn't the band's ethos or anything, but in my mind the first rule is to be interesting and then to be memorable and then to be good, in that order."

 

Arcade Fire's reputation for memorable performances is partly what propelled its original success, initially as a word-of-keypad phenomenon of the indie music blogosphere which exploded the band becoming cover fodder for the Canadian edition of Time.

 

Since then, things have moved so far beyond the word-of-mouth stage that anything related to the band, such as the release of a homemade video to YouTube in December, is viewed by some as a manipulative marketing ploy. A Montreal daily newspaper recently linked a story about so-called "stealth" or "viral" marketing – essentially an orchestrated campaign designed to generate buzz – to events around the forthcoming release of Neon Bible.

 

"We made that video in an hour with a camera and a laptop," says Chassagne, scoffing at the suggestion that the stunt was cynically conceived or premeditated.

 

Adds Butler: "Yes, we're orchestrating things. But we're orchestrating them in the sense that: Here's a stupid joke. Let's put this stupid joke online."

 

Which is not to say that Arcade Fire isn't interested in maintaining control over what it does – as well as how and when it does it. When the post-Funeral media frenzy threatened to get out of hand in 2005 – round about the time Coldplay's Chris Martin took to calling them "the best band in history" – members simply stopped granting interviews.

 

"If I exhaust myself with 6,000 interviews a week, then it's totally not worth it," Chassagne says. "It gets in the way of what I love, which is writing music and playing it for people."

 

"It's an attitude thing," Butler says. "I don't think we should have the attitude of sticking it to the press any more than we should have the attitude that we're going to get press to become celebrities. Either way, it takes up too much space in your mind. It's not what you should be thinking about.

 

"You should be thinking about how good the cup of coffee you're drinking tastes. Everything figures itself out from there. At least it has up to this point. And I assume it'll keep figuring itself out without too much bother."

 

http://www.thestar.com/artsentertainment/article/180453

they. were. so. awesome. last. night!!!!!! i'm still insanely high from it.

 

the rest of the pics from the set here:

THANK YOU TAMMY !! beautiful pics :kiss:

is it just me or Tim really looks much older on this tour?

Oh my gosh, amazing pics Tammy!!!!!!!! :stunned: Glad you had an amazing time!

 

I CANT WAIT!!! :dance:

:wacko: :stunned: No Cars Go.......fuck :stunned:

Neighbourhood #2 has to be one of the most addictive songs ever written.

 

*Alexander, our older brother*

i always thought he sings :"Alexander hold your brother" :lol:

Their new album is just amazing....I've had it on non-stop for the past few days. I'd say 3 full listens is needed to start you off.

ive been trying to upload this video onto youtube all day and it keeps spazzing out on me... let me know if it actually worked this time around

 

The Arcade Fire - Keep the Car Running (Live @ Judson Memorial Church 2.15.07)

i just got "Neon Bible" and im putting it on my ipod

 

i hope it is good

w00t youtube seems to be working for me again..

 

 

Keep the Car Running"

 

Neighborhood #3: Power Out:

wow.......

 

3 weeks tomorrow until I see them!!

Arcade Fire criticise U2 and Oasis

Win Butler talks exclusively to NME

 

Arcade Fire have criticised the marketing strategies of band's like U2, Oasis and The Rolling Stones.

 

Speaking in the new issue of NME, frontman Win Butler had a go at bands who aggressively force feed their music to fans.

 

Butler said: "It's not like we shun success, but at the same time we don't' want to shove it down people's throats. In the UK there's this kind of rock star competition.

 

"I don't know if U2 started it, or The Stones or Oasis but a lot of bands think in terms of: 'I'm going to be the biggest band in the world. Fuck all those bands who've got no ambition'. I think that's a total crock of shit.

 

"There's nothing less interesting to me than the idea of marketing the fuck out of something so people are forced to like it. Some bands are just manipulating people to buy music. That's how 90 per cent of the record industry works! It's basically the same as selling a fucking toaster or a cruise package."

 

http://www.nme.com/news/arcade-fire/26572

 

So basically it sounds like they are moaning at something which has been happening in this country since the middle 60's when you had the beatles against the stones.

wow.......

 

3 weeks tomorrow until I see them!!

 

yay for you!!!! :)

attn USA-ers, just in case you guys arent on the mailing list...

 

Feb 21st 2007 1:44pm

 

Here are the onsale dates & links that are known:

 

04/26 San Diego, CA - Spreckels Theatre (On-Sale 2/24 @ 10AM PST )

04/28 Indio, CA - Empire Polo Field (Coachella) (On-Sale Now )

05/01 Atlanta, GA - Civic Center (On-Sale 2/23 @ 10am EST )

05/02 Asheville, NC - Thomas Wolfe Auditorium (On-Sale 2/23 @ 10AM EST )

05/04 Washington, DC - DAR Constitution Hall (On-Sale 2/24 @ 10AM EST )

05/05 Philadelphia, PA - Tower Theatre (On-Sale 3/2 - Check arcadefire.net and/or ticketmaster.com next week for updated info)

05/07 New York, NY - TBA (On-Sale TBA - Check back to arcadefire.net for updated info)

05/08 New York, NY - TBA (On-Sale TBA - Check back to arcadefire.net for updated info)

05/09 New York, NY - TBA (On-Sale TBA - Check back to arcadefire.net for updated info)

05/10 Boston, MA - Orpheum Theatre (On-Sale 2/23 @ 10AM EST )

05/12 Montreal, Quebec - Arena Maurice Richard (On-Sale 3/2 - Check arcadefire.net & ticketmaster.com next week for updated info)

05/13 Montreal, Quebec - Arena Maurice Richard (On-Sale 3/2 - Check arcadefire.net & ticketmaster.com next week for updated info)

05/15 Toronto, Ontario - Massey Hall (On-Sale 2/23 - check Ticketmaster tomorrow for onsale time)

05/16 Toronto, Ontario - Massey Hall (On-Sale 2/23 - check Ticketmaster tomorrow for onsale time)

05/18 Chicago, IL - Chicago Theatre (On-Sale 2/24 @ 11AM CST )

05/19 Chicago, IL - Chicago Theatre (On-Sale 2/24 @ 11AM CST )

05/20 Chicago, IL - Chicago Theatre (On-Sale 2/24 @ 11AM CST )

05/27 Portland, OR - Schnitzer Concert Hall (On-Sale 2/24 - Check Ticketmaster.com for on-sale time)

06/01 Berkeley, CA - Greek Theatre (On-Sale 3/4 - Check arcadefire.net and/or ticketmaster.com next week for updated info)

06/02 Berkeley, CA - Greek Theatre (On-Sale 3/4 - Check arcadefire.net and/or ticketmaster.com next week for updated info)

wow! exciting!!! :D

MY TICKETS ARRIVED TODAY!!!!!!!!!!!!

!!!!!!!!!!!!

supported by PAtrick Wolf!!!!! :o