Ahhhhhhhh Hey, Hey, Hey!

Apologies for the scant posts this week. If it isn't one thing these days, it's another. Plus, post-burglary, I'm still in the very early stages of rebuilding my digital music collection to a point where I actually have new stuff to share. Among the things that I realized, only yesterday, I had lost for good -- by which I mean, I had no version on CD to re-rip -- was "Cold Wind" by the Arcade Fire, a non-album track that only ever appeared on the final Six Feet Under soundtrack in 2005. But our buddy Scott happened to hear me mention this, and when I came to work this morning, there it was in my in-box. So thank you, Scott -- this is one I definitely didn't want to live without. And for those of you who don't have this in your own collection, here you go. It's so good it hurts.

MP3: Arcade Fire - "Cold Wind" from Six Feet Under, Vol. 2: Everything Ends

Every Night My Dream's The Same

The great John Peel may not be around to preside any longer, but the BBC still hauls the best bands in the world into its Maida Vale studio to record sessions that put American radio to shame. Last Thursday, BBC Radio 2 broadcast the Arcade Fire's visit to Maida Vale, recorded before a small audience on June 19. The band -- which already has a reputation for knocking radio sessions clean out of the park -- turned in another spectacular performance, and since it's a recording most of our readers would never get to hear otherwise (do you Brits know how lucky you are?), I thought I'd toss it up for your weekend pleasure.

ARCADE FIRE - BBC Studios, Maida Vale, London - June 19, 2007

01 intro
02 Keep The Car Running
03 No Cars Go
04 Haiti
05 interview pt. 1
06 Black Mirror
07 Neon Bible
08 interview pt. 2
09 Intervention
10 Antichrist Television Blues
11 interview pt. 3
12 Neighborhood No. 3 (Power Out) > Rebellion (Lies)

BONUS: Video of the performance is here.

Every Time You Close Your Eyes

The Arcade Fire were in town last night, and of course we were front and center -- we're fans, if you haven't noticed -- for what turned out to be a revelatory set. Even with the ludicrously high expectations I had after seeing them in 2005, I was blown away. I'm simply not articulate enough to convey the heart, passion and effort that they seem to pour into every song, putting not just their voices but also (in the case of Will Butler, who at one point tightrope-walked the ramped balcony support at the Atlanta Civic Center until he was perched a good 30 feet above the crowd, teetering precariously and maniacally pounding on a drum the entire time) their bodies on the line to ensure that the performance is nothing less than epic, and no one leaves disappointed. After seeing this show, one thing is certain in my mind: In addition to releasing two of the finest records of the past decade, the Arcade Fire join the likes of Radiohead, Wilco and My Morning Jacket as among the very best live bands on the planet.

When They Kick At Your Front Door, How You Gonna Come?

Arcade Fire got the full-blown hero treatment last Friday night on BBC2's Culture Show, of which I managed to snag a DVD copy over the weekend. The broadcast included two exclusive acoustic performances filmed on March 16 in the lobby of the Brixton Academy, where the band played that evening. In honor of that venue, one of them was a cover of The Clash's "The Guns of Brixton," with little brother Will Butler providing the lead vocal through a megaphone. It's a neat moment, as perhaps the best live band working today pays humble tribute to its counterpart of going on 30 years ago. So I thought I'd share it, along with the original, which also features a lead vocal by a bandmember (Clash bassist Paul Simonon) who rarely got to sing front and center.

Arcade Fire - "The Guns of Brixton" (live in the Brixton Academy lobby, March 16, 2007)

The Clash - "The Guns of Brixton," from London Calling

Odds and Sods

In The New Yorker this week, Sasha Frere-Jones profiles Prince, calling him "perhaps the greatest living performer in the pop tradition."









Meanwhile, Salon looks at whether iTunes' new "premium downloads" are worth the extra 30 cents a pop, while readers weigh in on the uncertain fate of the compact disc.



Some kind, anonymous soul has posted the Arcade Fire's terrific "White Session," recorded on March 9, 2005 at Maison de le Radio in Paris, for download here.




Finally, the first promo pic for The White Stripes' forthcoming Icky Thump was released this week (click the thumbnail at left for the full-size image). Looks like somebody got a BeDazzler for Christmas.

Between The Click Of The Light And The Start Of The Dream

The good folks at Box.net have thrown us some extra bandwidth this month, gratis, so I figure we might as well try to use it up. For starters, we'll put the exclamation point on our coverage of Arcade Fire Release Week with this absolute gem, the band's studio session for the Canadian Broadcasting Company on October 2, 2004, not long after Funeral was released. This was the first time I had ever heard them play live (I didn't see them myself until about 3 months later), and I remember it being one of those moments where I had to stop whatever else I was doing and just listen. It's short, but it was being blasted all over their native country by the CBC, and maybe for that reason, it's still one of the most passionate and sublime performances I've ever heard them give.

Arcade Fire - CBC Session 10.02.04
01 No Cars Go
02 Neighborhood # 7 (Seven Kettles)
03 In The Back Seat
04 This Must Be The Place (Naive Melody) (Talking Heads cover)
05 Haiti

The King's Taking Back The Throne

With the pre-release media coverage having reached a crescendo in recent days (including a long and fawning profile in Sunday's New York Times Magazine), it seems pointless to write yet another review of Arcade Fire’s Neon Bible. Suffice it to say that it's finally out tomorrow, and yes, it's really, really good -- not as immediately engaging and consistently transcendent as Funeral, but a gorgeous, stirring record that not only fulfills the promise of the band's 2004 full-length debut (which is destined for “classic” status), but leaves no doubt that this will be a band to follow, admire, obsess over and adore for years to come.

In fact, if Neon Bible doesn't seem quite the masterpiece that its predecessor is, perhaps it’s only because this band can’t surprise us anymore. Funeral was a revelation from out of nowhere, a bolt of brilliance from a band that almost no one had ever heard of. This record, in contrast, has to be the most eagerly anticipated and over-hyped release of the year, or perhaps the last several years. So it has everyone expecting greatness, if not predisposed to look for flaws and lead some sort of backlash.

Fortunately, flaws are in short supply here. This is glorious, impassioned music by a band of exceptional vision, power and originality. I love it because it contains so many great songs -- "Black Mirror," "Keep The Car Running," "Black Waves/Bad Vibrations," "The Well and The Lighthouse" and even an amped-up new version of old favorite "No Cars Go." I would have been more than happy, though, if all it had given us was "Intervention," the biggest, most epic thing they've ever done. You can hate on them all you want for being such media darlings, for being so universally anointed, after only two records, as standard bearers for indie rock. But if the booming pipe organ on "Intervention" doesn't thrill you to your core -- if the moment at 2:54 when Win pushes his vocal up an octave, and Regine starts singing his lines back to him, doesn't make the hair on your arms stand up -- then there's something wrong with you.

MP3: Arcade Fire - "Keep The Car Running"

Keep The Car Running

I probably won't be able to post much (or at all) until this weekend, due to work pressures and a trip to lovely Newark, NJ. In the meantime, enjoy the two songs that Arcade Fire slayed on Saturday Night Live the other night. You can't see Win breaking several strings on "Intervention" and then smashing his guitar Townshend-style at the end, but since NBC has removed all the video from YouTube, this will have to do. In case you've been living under a rock, Neon Bible is out next Tuesday.

MP3: Arcade Fire - "Intervention" (live on SNL - February 24, 2007)

MP3: Arcade Fire - "Keep The Car Running" (live on SNL - February 24, 2007)

Odds and Sods

Arcade Fire ended their run of five sold-out shows in NYC on Saturday night, and by all accounts each night's performance was better than the one before, as Win Butler steadily recovered from an illness that had him really struggling early in the week. Recordings of the last two shows are online and ripe for the downloading. The show on Friday night was fantastic, and was recorded from the audience by a guy who's known in the taping community for getting consistently exceptional sound. His pull that night sounds almost as good as a soundboard tape, and Hearsay has mp3s posted today. As previously reported, too, NPR did a webcast of Saturday night's show that is now available to stream, with a downloadable mp3 version promised to be up by Tuesday. (If you can't wait one more day and want an mp3 rip of the NPR stream -- sticklers for sound quality beware -- you can grab that right here, right now.) I haven't listened to the Saturday show yet, but reports everywhere yesterday were that it was the finest of the bunch -- one of the best bands in the world right now, firing on all cylinders.

Following up on another old post, the trailer for the DVD portion of Neil Young's forthcoming Live at Massey Hall 1971 release can be seen here, and looks (and sounds) just too damned good to be true. (Via Chromewaves)


Whatevs.org finally re-launched last week, with a brand new look and feel, unleashing six weeks of Grambo's signature, slang-filled commentary on music, movies, TV, sports, advertising, journalism, bloggers and young starlets all at once. It's good to have him back, obvs.

Slate addresses the burning question, "How could a Geordie twat like Sting have fronted a band as great as the Police?"

The only two providers of satellite radio service in the U.S., XM and Sirius, are merging. Wonder what Dylan and Howard Stern will talk about at the water cooler.

And yet another sign that the apocalypse is near.

All Things Considered

My favorite media outlets (other than Sports Illustrated, that is) are turning out some serious music goodness this week.

On NPR, Terry Gross' Fresh Air chat with director John Waters on Wednesday was one of the more entertaining interviews I've heard in a long while. Waters has just released a CD, A Date With John Waters, that compiles some of his favorite love songs, and his selections are interesting to say the least. (And don't get me wrong, some of them are wonderful.) Waters also guest-hosted NPR's All Songs Considered program on the 8th, and you can hear some selections from the CD there as well.

This Saturday night, NPR will also webcast the final night of Arcade Fire's run of five sold-out shows at Judson Memorial Church in NYC, the first U.S. dates of the tour in support of their forthcoming record, Neon Bible. Although there have been complaints all week about the acoustics in the old church, the band's new songs are magnificent, they literally are among the best live bands I've ever seen, and hopefully a feed from the soundboard will sound fantastic.

Also well worth your time is this week's New Yorker piece on Arcade Fire by chief music writer (and seasoned blogger) Sasha Frere-Jones. The print version of the article features a portrait of the band by music photographer extraordinaire Anton Corbijn. When the man responsible for artwork on The Joshua Tree and Automatic For The People is taking your picture, you know things are going well for your band.