Arcade Fire at Marlay Park | Review

Arcade Fire & Pixies at Marlay Park, Sunday 29th June 2014

It seemed like a strange decision to put a huge contemporary stadium rock band like Arcade Fire on the same billing as Pixies. While they both have undeniably great music in their back catalogues, those catalogues are both based on very different musical philosophies, with Arcade Fire choosing a more solid drawn out sound, while Pixies prefer it fast and sweet. Indeed, Pixies’ ‘Surfer Rosa’ has half the run-time of the headliners’ latest record ‘Reflektor’ despite both featuring thirteen tracks. And the mysterious connection doesn’t become any clearer as the evening goes on.

Off the back of their first musical releases since originally splitting up in 1991, Pixies appear on and are dwarfed by the massive stage they are to perform on for the next hour or so. Besides Paz Lenchantin in the place once occupied by Kim Deal, it is that iconic band before us, who influenced most of the great music that came out in the ’90s. If you don’t hear flashes of Nirvana, or Soundgarden, or Radiohead during this set it’s because you’re not listening close enough. They kick off hard and fast with the classic drum and guitar intro of U:Mass and things fly along nicely for a few songs.

Then comes the new material and instantly it pronounces itself as different to what came before. That need not necessarily be bad, but tracks like Wave of Mutilation and River Euphrates still feel energetic, adventurous and exciting after twenty-five years. Bagboy, however, sounds like a song that some lame indie band from your hometown is bugging you to listen to on their Soundcloud every other day. The interest dips instantly and the only people really seeming to have a good time are the sixteen-year olds who don’t know any better and the guy who’s blasted out of his mind on MDMA, and keeps hollering “we love you, Charles” as if he’s expecting a response.

A later appearance from Here Comes Your Man and a spirited La La Love You offer a little oasis, but by the time the stage-manager has told them to wrap it up (Frank simply states “my guitar has died”), just as Lenchantin begins to beat out the opening to Debaser on her bass, it’s hard to feel too disappointed. Their legacy is unimpeachable but in 2014 they’re still coasting on what they had accomplished by 1991. It makes for a setlist in which the band performs old songs that they’re sick of at this stage and new ones that they know the audience aren’t that interested in.

Then Arcade Fire appear, and oh the contrast. That massive stage is filled with all twelve band members, and the place is a hive of mirrors and lights. The increasingly popular “fake band” arrives first to the opening notes of that ominous behemoth that is Wake Up, and then, with Win and three of his band-mates in U2 bobble-heads, we hear Where The Streets Have No Name. The rest of the band wanders out (including the now respected-as-an-artist-in-his-own-right Owen Pallett) as Win removes his Bono-head with a wry smile, saying “sorry about that”. So he is aware after all.

The disco rock that defined the ‘Reflektor’ album dominates this show, and Normal Person is a humble start compared to what comes later. The band’s theatrics onstage have started to gain them comparisons to Talking Heads and as Régine takes an elevated platform during Joan of Arc or sings back to the main stage from the b-stage in front of the barrier during It’s Never Over (Oh Orpheus), it proves to be an exciting addition to the set-up.

A variety of colours and tones are possible due to the elaborate stage design, and when mixed with the fancy camera work being shot live and screened to the sides and the back of the stage it really does add a dimension to the performance. The bulk of the set is great, and a surprise performance of Intervention is particularly welcome, but once the neon lava begins to flow from a volcano on the screen, and Régine takes to the front of the stage to perform Haïti the evening simply gets more exciting and more brilliant.

Having opened their last few shows, Reflektor arrives near the end of the main set here and fits in perfectly. The arc of the song carries it through a wild crescendo in which Win sings “just a reflection/of a reflection/of a reflection…etc.” before calming back down again, and a penetrating electronic bass recreates that intense rumble for your whole body that the LP does for your ears alone. The main set concludes with Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains) which in many ways predicted the musical direction Arcade Fire would pursue so successfully after ‘The Suburbs’.

Band mascot “Reflektor” (a man covered in a mirror costume) arrives and begins speaking some Irish to us, while a bobble-head Pope and TV-screen head Sinéad O’Connor rip up a photo of Miley Cyrus to a playback of Nothing Compares 2 U. Then Win says something about contraception not being legal in Ireland until 1992 and you’re kind of torn between being a cynical bastard and believing that maybe he does love coming to Dublin as much as he’s letting on. That’s one thing Arcade Fire certainly have over Pixies; as a band in their prime they exude charisma, and each one of them looks as if there is nowhere in the world they would rather be tonight than on this stage in front of us.

The sky has darkened and oblivious jet-liners drift overhead as Arcade Fire destroys Marlay Park with a four-song encore; the funky and powerful Afterlife; the anthemic Neighbourhood #3 (Power Out); the kinetic Here Comes The Night Time (featuring the most enjoyable confetti explosion of all time when the song cranks back up again); and that aforementioned Godzilla-like space-punching lung-squeezing piece of epic songwriting that is Wake Up. That song feels like that because you know and everybody knows what’s going to happen once it’s played.

It’s like the explosion after the launch of a firework, the tsunami after a devastating earthquake, the black hole once the solar system’s sun has finished devouring planets. There’s nowhere for the gig to go but there, and as the park slowly empties the wordless chorus is sung by the crowd, who have just witnessed – as concert-goers in years past have experienced with bands like The Who and Bruce Springsteen & The E-Street Band – one of the greatest live bands in history performing at their absolute creative peak.