We Don’t Need No Water, Let the Motherfuckers BURN. (Arcade Fire, Bowery B'room)

If you are anywhere near a performance by The Arcade Fire and you choose to not go, then I have zero respect for you.  Ignorance is no longer an excuse; I’m telling you, here, now:  See these kids.

(Here are their tour dates.)

These Montreal Rockers sold out the Bowery Ballroom on the strength of their debut CD, Funeral, and the endless, energetic buzz I’m proudly perpetuating here.

I’ve been wrestling, since I got that CD a couple months ago, with not only how good it is but why it’s so good.  I wasn’t, truth be told, too impressed with the sample songs up on their label’s site; and even though the album works better as a whole, it took me a while before I was convinced that I didn’t have to start the thing at track 6. 

Extra troubling was the dichotomy between the Fire’s lyrics and music:  Befitting a work called Funeral, the words are dripping with loss, pain, remorse.  “If you still want me, please forgive me, the crown of love is not upon me” (“Crown of Love”); “Somethin’ filled my heart with nothin’” (“Wake Up”); “They say a watched pot won’t ever boil, well I closed my eyes and nothin’ changed, just some water getting hotter in the flames”  (“7 Kettles”).

But the music is goddamned joyous.  It’s gorgeously melodic, alive, beautifully instrumented stuff that weathers fragile music-box sprinkles and Phil-Spector-Wall-of-Sound thunderboomers.  There’s nothing funereal about it.

Tonight I figured it out, during their very last song.  During the Björkish “In the Backseat,” the narrator sings about how she treasures not being in control:  “I don’t have to drive, I don’t have to speak.”  But, there’s an accident:  “My family tree’s losing all its leaves,” “Alice died in the night.”  And finally:  “I’ve been learning to drive.  My whole life, I’ve been learning.”

It’s redemptive, this Arcade Fire music.  It helps you move on.

And move.  As good as the CD is, they’re better live.  Doing the pack-as-many-Canadians-onstage-as-possible bit (see Broken Social Scene, Godspeed! YBE), all the members swapped instruments.  One player – looking a lot like Napoleon Dynamite – worked at guitar, synth, tambourine, a strap-on drum, an empty beer keg and his own motorcycle helmet.  One diminutive Quebecan sang, drummed, played keyboards, a xylophone, a steel drum and an accordion.  They filled out their set by covering Leonard Cohen and Talking Heads (This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody), and David Byrne was supposedly in-house to hear it).  Every song, every instrument, every note was played like their lives depended on it.

Which is why their music matters:  It very obviously, very honestly, matters to them.

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