Arcade Fire - Live and Elite
Feb 26th, 2007 by Donagh
On Friday night, during Newsnight Review, the writer and idiot Toby Young outted Montreal based Arcade Fire as a bunch of rich upper-class prigs, two of whom went to the most expensive school in the US private education system. Needless to say, he was dismissive of the album without actually saying anything about it, as if to suggest that their elite background automatically negated their newfound status as the ‘lightening rod for the traumatic times we’re currently fester in, mlord’ (which is my sarky version of a remark posited by one of the other reviewers – check the end of the streamed show to find his name).
Considering that Young is a chip off the old educated elite block himself this attitude, while typical of his usual vacuity, comes across as sour grapes. But more importantly, he was talking about something that had nothing to do with the music, and it’s the music, may I emphasize, that its all about.
The Scottish Wark made the point that Joe Strummer o’ the Clash went to a Public school, although a fairly modest one and that Radiohead are a bunch of comfortable middleclass toffs, who got their educatin’ done in some ancient building where the ivy was in abundance and no one would say that either act were cutting their cloth according to the latest fashions.
I can’t comment on how good Neon Bible is, but here, for my benefit as well as anyone else’s, is the New York Judson Church show on the 15th and 16th of this month thanks to ryspace.
BlackMirror
Keep The Car Running
Neon Bible
Intervention
Black Wave Bad Vibrations
Ocean Of Noise
The Well And The Lighthouse
Antichrist Television Blues
Windowsill
No Cars Go
My Body Is A Cage
NPR also provide a webcast of the show.
Because it was recorded in a Church whose architect didn’t take into account the acoustic requirements of amplified electric instruments, the sound is a bit watery.
All the tracks are from Neon Bible so if this is your only experience of the new album do not presume that it’s actually that flat (although tracks on the original were recorded in a church and the venues were picked in order to reflect that).
If you’re one of the small self satisfied elite who got tickets to the Arcade Fire gig at the Olympia on the 5th of March you can presume that the performance will have a deal more oomph - although I’m not promising anything.
And if you do go and enjoy it, why not fire Toby a quick email in order to spew forth your informed opinion at him, preferably using as many cuss words as possible.
Don’t know anything about Arcade Fire really - bought their EP with David Bowie though - but that Newsnight Review discussion was a complete joke.
In fact, any discussion of popular music on Newsnight Review is guaranteed to be a joke. They listen to a record once - if that - and then consider themselves qualified to talk about it for several minutes. Spoofers.
You’re right of course. It usually happens that half of them are into the record and the other half are simply contemptuous of ‘popular’ music in total. Their dismissive screwed up expression, which makes them look as if they’ve just eaten something quite tart, is exactly the same as the one used by convervative middle aged parents when they are listening to their son or daughter arguing that their latest favourite band are just as good a Wagner.
Kind of like Arcade Fire, they remind a bit of Pere Ubu, but not in a bad way.
Ah Pere Ubu, those Cleveland industrialist post-punker art noise(rs). One of those bands that you had to get into although they did their damnedest to make it difficult for you. I had to check Wikipedia to find out the track I liked the most from the little I’ve listened to. It’s non-alignment pact from Modern Dance.