Over the next 11 weeks I’ll dig deep into the 2014 Coachella Music Festival lineup, featuring one band per day. The purpose of this piece is to assist in difficult decisions that inevitably you’ll need to make, as well as, serve as a fun countdown to Coachella Week. Note: All bands appear in a completely random order… Enjoy, and let the countdown continue!
Day 67 = Arcade Fire
Performing = Sunday
Arcade Fire are an indie rock band that hail from Montreal and formed circa 2001. The Canadian sextet are headlining their second Coachella Festival in four years, and making their fourth appearance overall.
The collectives rise to fame came at such a rapid rate that they went from “your favorite band” (not mine) to guilty pleasure, faster than you could spell Reflektor. Over their ten plus year career, they’ve released four studio albums, all of which were
received positively, some more than others.
The band arrived on the scene in 2003 with a self-titled 7-track EP, and follow-up it up a year later with the critically acclaimed full-length debut Funeral. I don’t think I ran across a best albums of the decade list that didn’t include Funeral. The much-anticipated sophomore album Neon Bible followed in 2007, and the cherry on the top arrived in 2010, by way of the Grammy Award winning album The Suburbs.
Sunday February 13, 2011 is a date that will live in infamy. That’s the day indie went mainstream, although some will argue it happened when Natalie Portman uttered the words “The Shins, It’ll change your life, I swear” in the film Garden State.
Their fourth studio album The Refektors err Reflektor dropped last fall, but by that time most couldn’t care less, and the band knew it, trust me. Why else would they change their name to The Reflektors? At one time I would get irritated when some clueless hipster wannabe would say “I have some Arcade Fires on my iPod,” now I purposely call them The Arcade Fire or The Arcade Fires or The Arcades Fire… you get the point. The band’s act is tiresome, yeah I know, 20,000 still show up in basketball arenas, but those are the same people that found out about them for the first time when they read their morning paper on February 14, 2011.
I’ve seen the three previous Arcade Fire performances at Coachella. I can remember curiously sitting on the grass at the Outdoor Stage back in 2005 thinking to myself… what a bunch of fucking weirdo’s. Fast forward to 2007 and there I was, pushing my way up to rail at the Main Stage, watching at full attention. Then in 2011, I “stomached” my way through a very impressive headlining set. Which brings me to 2014, will I be there? Yeah, I’ll be there, I just won’t tell anyone I was there.
Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy a good Arcade Fire show as much as the next guy, I just don’t enjoy wearing a tuxedo to a rock concert.
Visit THE Arcade Fires website here:
http://arcadefire.com/site/
“Rebellion (Lies)”
“Black Mirror”
“Ready To Start”
GoINDEEpMusic