Arcade Fire performs on the Coachella stage during the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in Indio on Sunday, April 13, 2014.
(Rodrigo Pena/Freelance Photographer)
Arcade Fire’s closing night headlining performance at the first weekend of the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival wrapped up the event with a set that was a microcosm of Coachella itself.
The set included surprise guest spots from Debbie Harry and the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, Win Butler’s commentary on VIPs, music and the dust storm that engulfed the Empire Polo Club Saturday night and a top-notch set with big production from the festival favorite.
With a bunch of hexagonal shaped mirrors above them, the indie rock band, which had its second turn headlining Coachella, the band kicked off its set with the title track of its latest album, the deep disco groove “Reflektor.”
Arcade Fire, whose members are talented multi-instrumentalists on their own, had even more help with a horn section and expanded percussion to fill out the sound even more.
As the band played “Neighborhood #3 (Power Out)” early in the set, singer, drummer, accordion, keyboard player Regine Chassagne gave a brightness to the uptempo song with a steel drum and the beautiful cacophony of the song’s ending led into the high-energy “Rebellion (Lies),” another classic from the band’s debut record.
William Butler, Win’s brother, dressed in a pink suit, ran around to the edges of the stage beating a drum as if he was the human version of Animal from The Muppets.
Win Butler of Arcade Fire looks up at a mirror hanging above him on the Coachella stage during the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in Indio on Sunday, April 13, 2014.
(Rodrigo Pena/Freelance Photographer)
After “Joan of Arc,” Win Butler spoke to the crowd about how the band has been coming there for a lot of years (Sunday night’s appearance was the band’s fourth), and called out what he called the “fake VIP bull…” of the festival.
“People dream of being there and it super sucks so don’t worry about it,” Butler said.
Of course, that didn’t stop the band from venturing into the VIP pit later in the set, but I’ll get to that in a bit.
However, that wasn’t Butler’s only barb of the night. Near the very end of the set, he touched on other performers, too, giving “a shoutout to all the other bands still playing real instruments at this festival.”
At Coachella, where rock-oriented music has traditionally drawn well over the years, electronic dance music artists commanded more attention from the masses in 2014 than ever before.
But Arcade Fire’s set still had that special Coachella magic in its production.
As the band performed “It’s Never Over (Hey Orpheus), ” Chassagne appeared on an elevated platform in the middle of the crowd with a woman dressed in a skeleton costume bending and flowing to the music beside her.
The festival is known for its surprises and guest stars. Pharrell Williams could have cast a modern day version of “The Love Boat” during his set Saturday night (in my version Gwen Stefani will be your cruise director and Busta Rhymes will pass the Courvoisier as your bartender). Less successful was Justin Bieber’s appearance with Chance the Rapper earlier on Sunday. But just right for the mood of Arcade Fire’s human disco ball (by the way, couldn’t someone have borrowed the disco shark from the Yuma Tent for their set?), was an appearance by Blondie’s Debbie Harry, who joined Arcade Fire for a cover of “Heart of Glass.”
After the song, she stayed on stage and danced with some rhythm ribbons during “Sprawl II (Mountains to Mountains).” Meanwhile, it was building to an apex of the Coachella version of Rio de Janeiro’s Carnival as the band played “Here Comes the Night Time.” There were people dancing while wearing paper mâché heads, cannons showered the audience in confetti. And there was much dancing.
But for anyone who saw the magical Arcade Fire Coachella set back in 2011, when dozens upon dozens of LED balloons dropped on the crowd, this was tame. Confetti and special guests? Girl Talk did that Friday night with Busta and balloons, too.
Noting the time ticking down on the clock on stage, and comparing it to the Times Square New Year’s Eve ball drop in New York, Win Butler asked the crowd to keep singing if the power got cut off.
The band launched into “Wake Up,” and was soon joined by New Orleans’ Preservation Hall Jazz Band, who played earlier on Sunday, in the walkway between the stage and the fans. As the song seemingly wound down, Arcade Fire grabbed its unplugged instruments and took to the field to join them.
They walked up the path between barricades set up in the middle of the crowd, with Butler leading the masses, bullhorn in hand, in a seemingly never-ending singalong of the song’s “woah, oh, oh, oh” hook. Then, the procession made its way into the very VIP pit that Butler cast off earlier in the set before the Preservation Jazz Hall Band kept playing all the way as the band went backstage.
The intimate singalong was the Coachella moment for 2014.
Set list:
Reflektor
Flashbulb Eyes
Neighborhood #3 (Power Out)
Rebellion (Lies)
Joan of Arc
The Suburbs
Ready to Start
Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)
No Cars Go
Keep the Car Running
Afterlife/My Body Is a Cage
It’s Never Over (Hey Orpheus)
Heart of Glass
Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)
Normal Person
Here Comes the Night Time
Wake Up