If the days when indie rockers could still make a splash at Coachella were on their deathbed, then Arcade Fire may have arrived just in time to save the day.
The band’s appearance, which was only announced a day before their concert, turned out to be the perfect surprise for anyone missing the days when a band offering this type of orchestral instrumentation and thematic lyrics depths could get the highest rating.
It’s been seven long years since Arcade Fire did this, but those days didn’t seem so far away as a crowd filled the Mojave stage for a show that could only be described as moving and even cathartic.
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Things got off to a disturbing start after singer Win Butler had to stop singing just moments after dropping their new single, ‘The Lightning I’, from their upcoming album ‘We’.
But if the crowd was “waiting for lightning,” they quickly started getting it as Butler launched into the accompanying song, “The Lightning II.” At the end of this song, the crowd cheered loudly and Butler triumphantly held his guitar above his head.
With these newbies out of the way, the band then embarked on many of their familiar hits. The crowd went to another level during “Rebellion (Lies)” with many joining in on the iconic “wooh” sound.
The show’s emotional zenith came soon after, when Butler stopped to remind the crowd how Coachella was where Arcade Fire was “introduced to the world in 2005”.
“We came here when we were kids,” he said. “We are no longer children now.”
Butler then invoked the COVID-19 pandemic for the first of several times during the show, noting that it has “been a time of incredible change but we can’t let it change or break us.”
He then launched into a poignant rendition of “The Suburbs,” during which he made a small but sharp change to one of the song’s most iconic lyrics to say “and all the walls they have built in 2020 are finally falling and they all mean nothing, nothing at all.”
After near-perfect renditions of the hits “Ready to Start,” “Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains),” “Everything Now,” and even a stage dive and some crowd surfing from Butler, he asked if it would be okay. he was playing a new song. The lyrics, which mentioned that it was “completely normal to be sad”, were accompanied by a thrilling moment in which several crayon-like inflatable structures suddenly popped up above the stage. One of the inflatables first leaned forward unlike the others before inflating triumphantly to join them.
Then, finally, it was time for “Wake Up” (what else?) and the moment lived up to the jubilation of the song with everyone in sight.
Are you saying we can still be friends? From the looks of tonight’s set, Coachella is always happy to be that and more with Arcade Fire.