Win Butler playing to Hyde Park last night
If you’re going to construct a huge fenced enclosure in one of central London’s parks, you may as well use it! Sandwiched between last weekend’s Hard Rock Calling and the upcoming Wireless Festival, Arcade Fire took the chance to play to their biggest UK audience last night as the Montreal-based band took over Hyde Park for the evening.
While the event may not have made use of all the stages the makeshift venue had to offer (well, it did, but not always for music – short film Scenes From the Suburbs was screened in one tent), the line-up for the evening promised some of the best music acts currently touring.
Fans unencumbered with a job, or with forgiving bosses, were treated to performances from Owen Pallett, formerly known as Final Fantasy and a contributor to all of Arcade Fire’s albums, and 2011′s hot band The Vaccines, before American band Beirut offered a summery accompaniement to most of the 60,000-strong crowd’s arrival.
On a pleasant evening in central London, Mumford and Sons gave their support to the headline act as ‘very special guests’. Playing a value-added 75-minute set, the band accompanied fan favourites with some new songs including ‘Lover’s Eyes’ and ‘Below My Feet’.
I had been excited to finally see this band live, having heard so much about them, but not yet being able to find time to give them a listen. Despite the whooping enthusiasm of the huge crowd, Mumford and Sons brand of folk-tinged rock left me cold – what does everyone see in them? Their live performance was well constructed and they proved to be a good support for Arcade Fire, getting the lively crowd into the mood, but I just don’t see what’s so great about their music. Why them? Why not, say, Johnny Flynn?
Escaping to the beer tent seemed the only option, and Mumford and Sons’ set provided the crowd with delight and me with nothing more than a faint soundtrack to my (largely-liquid) dinner.
Arcade Fire - no London return for "a couple of years"?
Even with the disappointment of not falling head-over-heels for their support act, it’s hard not to be pumped up for one of your favourite band’s live shows. This gig would be the sixth time I’d seen the Fire in concert, having caught them in every type of venue, from intimate concert hall to muddy festival field, but I was expecting this show to be their crowning glory.
It started well, with opener ‘Ready to Start’ (see what they did there) being followed by ‘Wake Up’, a song that usually comes towards the end of Arcade Fire’s setlists, but that found its way to the start of the show with an introduction from Win. “This a song we normally do later in the set but I want to fucking do it now,” said the frontman, whose slim appearance and new haircut made him look a little sickly to me.
The changes to the setlist turned out to be the biggest problem with Arcade Fire’s biggest UK concert. After the crowd-pleasing openers, their set became somewhat self-indulgent, with band favourite ‘No Cars Go’ being followed up with a string of their less-loved and slower-paced songs including ‘Haiti’ and ‘Crown of Love’. Even the second live appearance of new song ‘Speaking in Tongues’ failed to raise the despondent crowd, and fans some distance from the stage (as we were) started to zone out halfway through the concert.
A double hit of ‘The Suburbs’ and ‘Month of May’ brought their attention back, and the band didn’t put a foot wrong for the rest of their set – unless you count finale ‘Sprawl II’, which, considering their back catalogue, is an awful song to end a show on. But with the damage done as the sun went down, this was a live outing that would not reach the pantheon of Arcade Fire’s greatest performances. “Goodbye London , we’ll see you in a couple years” proclaimed Win Butler as his band vacated the stage under the terms of Hyde Park’s strict curfew. We’ll miss them, but perhaps not on the strength of this one concert…
Arcade Fire’s setlist:
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Ready to Start
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Wake Up
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No Cars Go
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Haïti
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Intervention
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Rococo
- Speaking in Tongues (with Owen Pallett)
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Crown of Love
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The Suburbs / The Suburbs continued…
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Month of May
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Rebellion (Lies)
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Neighborhood #2 (Laika)
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We Used to Wait
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Neighborhood #3 (Power Out)Encore:
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Keep the Car Running
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Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)
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Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)
I saw Marcus Mumford being turned away from the Live Nation backstage area. Pretty funny. I walked out of Arcade Fire. They’re one of my favourite bands and I’ve seen them four times but this gig was pants. I was near the front and the atmosphere was stale, the sound levels were off and their setlist was all over the place. Gutted.
Like I said, I don’t get Mumford, I never said their performance was bad. And Arcade Fire are always great live, but they have to be judged against their own high standards – considering the last time I saw them was the legendary Hackney concert, this show failed to come close. This wasn’t Arcade Fire at their best, and not just because of sound issues. The first half of the setlist was poorly put together, and many of the best songs from The Suburbs were missed in favour of ones that don’t translate as well live (i.e. Rococo – one of my favourite songs from the album, but not great live – and Sprawl II).
You really don’t know what you are talking about. Mumford were excellent – old songs hit the heights and new – lover of the light – were pointing towards an exciting second album. Fire were great apart from terrible sound – the last song was inspired with my group asking what was that fantastic final song that we don’t know the title of. They finished on a high.
JonP
I would have to say I agree to your overall summary of Arcade Fire’s performance but I personally felt let down, as did many people around me, with the quality of the sound. I do not put the crowds despondency down to the choice of songs that the band chose, I put it down to being able to hear the person 10 ft in front of you talking at a normal level. The sound level at concerts should be at a point of almost hurting, the bass should be felt in your chest and if you do feel the need to talk to your friend, it should be shouting in their ear. Granted we weren’t near the front but we were behind the second set of speakers in line with the sound technicians desk, a place that should still have a decent sound. When the very poor, slightly drunk and uninterested crowd did get behind a song, we could hear us all singing rather than anything from the band.
Although I thought Arcade Fire played just as good as I knew they would, I was let down by either a very poor sound system or a very poor sound engineer.