Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall
Portland, Oregon
There is sometimes a certain and very specific type of syndrome many people experience after attending a particularly compelling concert. Related to the better-known "movie hangover," the "post-show stupor" can last hours, even days, and its symptoms include vertigo, swooning, fatigue, loss of speech, earworms, uncontrollable humming, and sometimes OCD-like manias in the form of pressing the "play" button on one's iPod until the related band's albums drain the battery. There is no known cure, but writing to you while my own post-show stupor is still in its death throes, I can't imagine anybody wanting one.
When Arcade Fire played Portland's Crystal Ballroom in 2005, their encore consisted of marching everyone out onto the intersection of Burnside and SW 14th and playing an impromptu 20-minute set. I wasn't there to see that, but I was still holding out for some special sort of transcendence this time.
We arrived at the Schnitzer (affectionately known as the "Schnitz" in this neck of the woods) not long after the 8pm starting time and opening band Electrelane were already well into their set. The Schnitz (once known as the Paramount Theater and easily recognizable by the large "Portland" sign on the side of the building) is a classical concert hall and vaudeville that has been restored to its 1920s Italian Rococo splendor. It's also easily one of the most beautiful venues I've ever seen. The juxtaposition of a marble and velvet theater lit by huge crystal chandeliers and scored with Electrelane's motorik art-rock created a sense of "through-the-looking-glass" surreality and it halved my head right down the middle.
We found our seats on the orchestra level and the adorable couple to my right proposed a swig of Maker's Mark from their flask. Already vibrating from the drinks we started with at home, I couldn't in good conscience refuse their offer and so I accepted. Then we spot Sleater-Kinney's Carrie Brownstein front and center and we're all having a coronary. (The Decemberists' Colin Meloy and Death Cab for Cutie's Ben Gibbard are, we later hear, somewhere out there, too.) When the 60s soul and girl group tunes being piped into the hall fade out and the lights finally dim, everyone explodes.
MP3: Arcade Fire - "Keep the Car Running"
Can I just tell you? The sound? Flawless. The lows were deep and rooted at the base of our spines; the highs were loud and crisp with a snap at the top of our skulls. And once we heard the crescendo of strings that lead into "Keep the Car Running," all 3,000 people in that hall jumped up out of their seats with a shout and never sat back down.
MP3: Arcade Fire - "No Cars Go"
From "Keep the Car Running" to "No Cars Go," the band started as they meant to go on: with a series of epic bangs. One song after another, even when they slowed it down for a moaner once or twice, the entire show was a constant barrage of gorgeousness. But that's not to say they were over-precious. Frontman Win Butler provided levity throughout the night with cute asides to his wife-slash-musical partner-in-crime Regine Chassagne and running jokes about the goth convention in town (three consecutive nights of goth and industrial bands at the Crystal Ballroom brought the black-clad ones out in droves all week), but Butler's own dark roots evinced his intended good humor. "Aren't they supposed to be... you know, solitary?" he quipped between songs. "The Internet is a powerful tool!"
It was organized chaos--musicians trading off instruments, going from accordion to keyboard to guitar and hurdy-gurdy--sometimes resembling a rather beautiful carnival sideshow. Percussion was banged on drums, amplifiers, the stage, even other band members' backs. Halfway through their set, the dirge-like title track from Neon Bible segues softly into "Distortions," a Clinic cover that absolutely no one expected. The room darkens and spotlights focus on Butler and his mirrored guitar, creating an effect that makes it appear as if he's made of stained glass. Shards of light shoot out of him and into the crowd as the band joins in for the last few strains. It is, if you'll excuse the sap, frankly magical.
For "Rebellion (Lies)," the last song before the encore, Butler dives out into the crowd to take pictures of folks with their own cameras. It's a sweet send-off before the fake-out exit, and when the band makes its way back to the stage after a minute or two, Butler is replaced by a cardboard cutout of himself with a display screen face. The real Butler has positioned himself at the pipe organ in back for "My Body Is a Cage" and his singing face, captured by video camera, is projected onto the figure's head. How's that for stage presence?
MP3: Arcade Fire - "Rebellion (Lies)"
He assumes his place at center stage once more for the finale, and when all 3,000 fans and converts in the crowd shout along with the ten band members up on stage at the top of their lungs to "Wake Up" (the booming soccer-chant anthem from their freshman masterpiece, Funeral), it becomes more than just a music concert. It becomes a spiritual revival. That huge pipe organ up there in the back, that big open bible projected in neon onto the drapes and screens, the fog and the lights--no matter how cliched and trite it may sound, and no matter whether you're a middle-aged couple spurred by the article in the New York Times or you suspect you'll be late to first period the following morning, I defy you to say, straight-faced and honestly, that you haven't just had a religious experience. That transcendence I was looking for? Got it. And who says no one goes to church on Sunday anymore?
Setlist:
Keep the Car Running
No Cars Go
Haiti
Neighborhood #2 (Laika)
Black Mirror
In the Backseat
Neon Bible
Distortions
Antichrist Television Blues
The Well and the Lighthouse
Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)
Intervention
Ocean of Noise
Neighborhood #3 (Power Out)
Rebellion (Lies)
Encore:
My Body is a Cage
Wake Up
