A Look At The Suburbs: Arcade Fire at Danforth Music Hall

What a show.

I’m sitting here revelling in the awesomeness of last night’s Arcade Fire show at the Danforth Music Hall. The show was one of two in Toronto this weekend (the other to happen tonight) and one of a handful of surprise shows that have happened this week in Ontario and Quebec. The band have been taking these shows as an opportunity to test out the new material from the bands upcoming release “The Suburbs”.

As with anyArcade Fire show I’ve seen, or ever heard of in the past, the band were a tour-de-force on stage. They led with four new songs within the first five (including the singles we’ve been hearing the net in the title track ‘The Suburbs’ and ‘Month Of May’) but the best new material shined in a pocket near the end of the set, a three song group of ‘Modern Man’, ‘Rococo’ and ‘We Used To Wait’. I’d choose ‘Modern Man’ as a reason in itself to grab the bands’ upcoming album. It featured the band playing outside of their traditional four on the floor rhythm and a catchy, memorable chorus.

Finishing the show by whipping the crowd into a frenzy, the band powered through Funeral faves ‘Neighborhood #3 (Power Out)’ and ‘Rebellion (Lies)’. If that wasn’t enough to finish with, the band came back to encore with Neon Bible‘s ‘Keep The Car Running’ and the completely compelling ‘Wake Up’.

I’d say I wasextremelysatisfied with the new body work I heard last night. As we were all judging the new against the bar set by their previous albums, I’m guessing we’ll watch a many few of these songs from The Suburbs slowly become classic, just that way we did when Neon Bibles’ winners revealed themselves.