Arcade Fire

The evening that saw Canadian band Arcade Fire headline Milan's Arena Civica is the kind that goes down in the annals. Certainly for the music, but also for the crowd: around 7,000 paying fans packed between the crowded floor in front of the stage and the terraces of the glorious stadium designed in the city centre in neoclassical style by architect Canonica in the early 1800s. What was once one of the most spectacular open-air entertainment venues for Milanese people (a huge venue that over two centuries has hosted historical re-enactments of naval battles, the so-called naumachie, Buffalo Bill's legendary circus, and every sort of sporting event) has, for a few summers now, been home to the "Jazzin Festival", a long-running summer music series with an extremely rich lineup, within which this season stars of the rock firmament such as Lou Reed and Robert Plant have shone.

One sour note of these summer evenings at the Arena (though the same goes for the San Siro concerts) concerns the volume levels, which are really very low and detrimental to the sound. Nothing new for Milan, where the lack of large venues designed and equipped for rock concerts forces promoters to use structures surrounded by residential areas, with the resulting limits imposed on decibels and endless controversies, complete with legal fallout.

Arcade Fire are probably the only band born out of the 2000s indie scene to be catapulted into the rock pantheon of the greats. So I approach the show (the first of theirs I've had the pleasure of hearing) with genuine curiosity and the intent of uncovering some clue as to the reasons for such clamour and worldwide success. Word arriving from London, telling of almost 70,000 fans who turned out for the Canadians just a few days before the Milan date, only heightens my anticipation further. Not being a great connoisseur or die-hard fan of the band also puts me in a position to approach the evening in a more detached and objective way. Once inside the Arena, my gaze immediately turns to the crowd, following the lesson of the great music promoter Leo Wächter (famous as the man who brought the Beatles to Italy, as well as the Stones, the Who, Hendrix and many others). "You need cross-eyed vision," Leo used to say, "one eye on the stage and the other on the crowd." That all-round approach remains a constant point of reference for me whenever I walk into a venue or concert space, and it continues throughout the evening, especially once the idea of putting together a live report starts spinning around in my head.

Looking around, I see a fairly varied crowd, but with a strong contingent of rock-wavers born straddling the 70s and 80s — meaning a generation that grew up musically in that era and, decades later, finds familiar sounds in Arcade Fire (for what it's worth, I count myself among them). Let me say straight away that what will strike me most about the evening is the Canadian collective's ability to communicate in a contagious way, a knack for generating a sense of belonging. A band that seems to have an innate familiarity with large crowds — I could even call them a predestined band (I think of the blessings that Butler and co. have received in their still relatively brief career from so many big names, from Bowie joining them onstage to Springsteen hosting the Win-and-Régine couple on his, from U2 inviting them to open their shows, right up to Coldplay calling them the best band around).

Arcade Fire answer one of the biggest expectations of a rock audience: that social need to gather. There's a thread linking the band's ability to write anthems ("Wake Up" above all) and the wider audience's desire to experience belonging firsthand, dancing and singing at the top of their lungs among thousands of others doing the same in unison. It's a primordial cathartic ritual that rock can sometimes stage; not always synonymous with musical quality (which, in the specific case of this evening, there is plenty of, as I'll get to shortly), but sometimes there isn't any at all (without the crowd even caring or complaining). The Canadian band, for its part, plays its role with thoroughly North American professionalism — every musical moment is meticulously planned, as is every instrument change, and even the moments of apparent musical chaos turn out, on close inspection, to be carefully written-out scores — but with a joyful spirit, like a folk festival. There's no improvisation, but there is joy in performing a score. Perhaps it's no coincidence that Cirque Du Soleil, one of the most perfect and astonishing spectacle-making machines touring the world, is based precisely in Canada.

But let's start from the beginning, with a rundown of the evening's songs, which in the end numbered 18 including the two encores. "Ready To Start", one of the best tracks from the latest album "The Suburbs", immediately warms up the night, with the bass laying down the fundamentals of the chord progression that the keyboard closes and relaunches in the chorus with a handful of killer notes. The early-U2-style intro unleashes "Keep The Car Running", from the second album "Neon Bible", keeping the tension high.

The band confirms they want to play some of their best cards right away with "No Cars Go". The verse's vocal line carried solely by the bass, the gentle orchestration and the expressive intensity of the chorus make it one of the Canadian band's anthems, a sort of "Love Will Tear Us Apart" for the 2000s. The gorgeous crescendo of the ending sweeps up the crowd, who join in singing along with the musicians.

After this formidable triple shot, it's time for the danceable, exotic "Haiti". The page turns, and with "My Body Is A Cage" the dark, dramatic side of Arcade Fire emerges, underscored by churchy choirs and soul-blues shades. Win Butler then launches into "Crown Of Love", only to stop a few seconds later. He apologises to the crowd and picks the melancholy ballad back up (truth or staged bit?).

After this more intimate interlude, the band launches into "The Suburbs", the hit from the latest record, a march with Beatles-school pop echoes, naturally followed by "The Suburbs (Continued)".

From pop to rockabilly, next up is "Month Of May", an unremarkable track taken from the latest "The Suburbs", as is the following, more reflective "Rococo".

At this stage of the show, an emotional and expressive alternation between songs takes hold. Next comes the slow, solemn crescendo of "Intervention", a track underpinned by liturgical organ, choirs and orchestration. Then another gem from "Funeral" warms up the crowd with its ever-straight, square rhythm, the bass bending up to the high note in the style taught by Adam Clayton; it's "Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)", one of the loveliest ballads in the setlist, showcasing the band's full ability to build emotional tension and radiate warmth.

Next is "We Used to Wait", one of the most successful tracks on the latest album "The Suburbs", capable of building emotional tension with the insistent pounding of the keyboards before opening up into a liberating chorus. The evening reaches its high point with "Neighborhood #3 (Power Out)", a track built for a big live dimension, unfurling in all its force and once again evoking echoes of early U2.

In the instrumental variation, I think I can also glimpse the rhythmic dynamism of the great Derek Forbes, bassist for Simple Minds, whose historic live shows are still etched in my memory.

Closing the setlist is another song from the first album, "Rebellion (Lies)", with its ever-square groove, the kick drum pulsing in four, bass and piano hammering out the octaves.

Of course it doesn't end there, and the band returns for two encores. It kicks off with the great Arcade Fire anthem par excellence, that "Wake Up" which so many long-running bands can't boast having in their repertoire. The 7,000 fans at the Arena sing along in unison in a truly stirring outburst.

The second encore leaves you a little puzzled. The choice falls on perhaps the most blatantly commercial song in the band's entire catalogue, "Sprawl II". So we go from the rock epic of "Wake Up" to the disco keyboards of "Sprawl II", while Régine dances and sends the crowd into raptures.

The evening turns into one big popular celebration. The final image the band leaves behind before taking their bow is playful and joyful. An image that takes me a few days to digest, but that I ultimately come to accept gladly. Let the party begin!

A few final thoughts on the evening. Arcade Fire are musically accomplished: they know how to play, they know how to hold a stage, and they have a dozen or so songs that are already classics, tracks with real live "punch" and emotional intensity. The Canadian band has a gift for connecting with a large audience. They know how to carry a crowd along, to create a sense of belonging. Their shows turn into a kind of ritual celebration, in the tradition of classic rock. Arcade Fire aren't particularly original, but they've been skilled at gathering and reworking a number of ingredients. They draw on the sounds and methods of new wave (especially in the driving bass lines built on root notes, but also in the drumming, for instance the sixteenth notes on the hi-hat); they take on board the lesson of the rock ballad (U2 above all come to mind); they nod to techno-pop in the dancey keyboard riffs.

Elements of, if not originality, then at least variety and pleasant surprise come from the fact that they take the stage as an eight-piece. The result is a vital, dynamic folk orchestra, with strings, accordion, mandolin and assorted percussion, capable of raising walls of sound with real impact and surprising arrangements. The musical cards are often reshuffled, with the musicians swapping roles on stage, moving from one instrument to another, giving a sense of playful, well-balanced motion (to borrow a painterly reference, think of Matisse's "La Danse").

Joy, then, is one of the evening's defining traits. A joy that stands, however, in contrast to the moments of greater dramatic intensity found in the more intimate ballads. Joy and pain. Extroversion and introversion. Régine and Win. In these opposites you can glimpse the cyclical dynamic of life itself, and perhaps this is where I've grasped at least part of the secret of Arcade Fire: they stage life itself, with all its contradictions, its opposites. And when a musician, a band, manages to find a dynamic balance between these opposites, that's where the miracle of artistic expression and synthesis reveals itself.

Ride the wave of great music

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