Go ahead. Watch it. I'll be here, waiting for all 9 minutes to finish.
No really. Go watch it. All of it.
I'll be waiting.
...
...
...
Done? Good.
I bumped into the Arcade Fire back in September. I was idly browsing through Yahoo News, don't know why, but they had an article about anthemic bands. Randomly, I decided to read the article. Sure enough, they had a piece on this odd band called the Arcade Fire. I didn't really know what it was or what it sounded like, but I decided to sample some of the songs from online.
I had heard their song "Neighborhood #3 (Power Out)" back in Freshman year of college and had thought it pretty good, even if the lead singer was iffy on the vocals. It had a stirring rythmn and interesting melody. But I had never really looked into them back then.
I found myself, last September, kinda into them, but not wholy encompassing my musical tastes. I was still into the rage of Nine Inch Nails after coming off the summer of my academic suspension. At that point, I was deeply interested in one of their songs, Antichrist Television Blues.
Fast Forward to early April this year.
I rediscovered the Arcade Fire randomly while YouTube surfing. I finally watched some videos of their live performances and was absolutely floored. The raw energy of this band and the meaning you could see them pouring into their music was astounding.
And then I came across this gem of a video.
Regine sings with such emotion. The band plays and tries to keep up. Each representing different aspects of the whole. First, understand that this is the last song on their first studio album, Funeral, so titled because many of the members of the band lost family while it was being recorded. This particular song directly references Regine's grandmother, Alice.
It starts so quietly, with sincere loss and sadness. There is such loneliness that seems unsurmountable. The imagery of learning to drive a car strikes with the feeling of growing up (don't all kids want to drive?) and the reluctance to have to deal with issues by oneself.
But then we see the other instruments come in. We are denying that anything is wrong. We are trying to make do like nothing has happened. We are trying to hold ourselves together.
And then... the facade falls apart. We, like Regine, fall into despair as we lose ourselves.
Then the anger. Richard Parry, the guy originally playing the double bass who picks up the one drum and bangs on it into the microphone. His performance is as powerful as Regine's, with the fury of denial and anger that goes with loss. It strikes a chord and is essentially to what is perhaps the pinnacle of the song.
Then the dissonance of the band as they leave the stage. The dissonance of knowing that life will never be the same.
But oddly enough, from the audience themselves, comes perhaps one of the most interesting features.
Hope.
Hope in the form of humming/singing that haunting refrain back to an empty stage. I see it as hope. Perhaps it could be interpreted as false hope, but hope nonetheless. A desire for something more, something greater.
All in one 9 minute video of a live show.
