Overhyped Brooklyn indie darlings the National opened with a set that was decent, but ultimately disappointing (or, as Christine and Merrill might say - unfortunate). If you haven't heard them, the National are basically an attempt to merge mumbly Springsteen-esque vocals with reverby hipster rock (like the Hold Steady if they drank less and did more coke). They played maybe two songs that the crowd actually got into and didn't make the singer seem like a total douche playing to a half-full theater of people filing in to see a much better band (on a side note, the drummer for this band is actually - or unfortunately - really good). If anything, that performance just made me that much more appreciative when the Arcade Fire came on.
As the lights dimmed the circular screens around the stage fired up with some genuinely creepy footage of a poorly dressed, overly made-up televangelist going on about Jesus or the rapture or whatever it is those people ramble about. Then the band came out and filled the stage (literally - its like a dozen people - they could form their own football team), opening with "Keep the Car Running" followed by the the contradictory, yet equally automotive-themed, "No Cars Go". Though they primarily stuck to material off Neon Bible, they did play most of the best songs off of Funeral (which surprisingly included both of the Regine Chassigne-sung tracks). Certainly one of the highlights of the show was Win Butler doing "My Body Is a Cage" with full pipe organ accompaniment, and if nothing else, this show made a fantastic case for public school music programs in Canada, with most of the members of the band shuffling from instrument to instrument between songs, and the two horn players effortlessly switching from trumpet to French horn to saxophone to tuba, sometimes in the same song. The United Palace Theater, an old vaudeville theater, way the fuck up on 175th street, thats been recently restored and being booked for concerts, was probably the perfect location for the band, both in terms of the acoustics and its intricately-detailed, gold-painted ornamentation. It was interesting to see a band that seems to rely so heavily on intimacy with their audience play to a theater thats at least twice the size of any venue they've played in past tours, though they compensated for this (and almost gave the security guards coronaries) when they kicked into "Wake Up" during the encore and invited the crowd to rush the stage. I was initially concerned that they were holding something back for their show at Radio City Music Hall the following night, but since David Bowie never made it on stage with the band, as everybody at the show expected, and the security was ejecting fans that tried to get any nearer to the stage than their seat, I'm gonna say that this was probably the best of the three NYC shows.
