Arcade Fire at Webster Bank Arena, Bridgeport, CT

Winn Butler dead ringers, doppelgangers, and duplicates…

Mariachi banditos next to a glitter masked cougar…

Overweight and underdating Cinderellas…

Pimple-headed adolescents, sweating behind homemade Phantom masks…

Propeller-headed gonzos in jester hats 4 months early for the Gathering of the Vibes…

A Philippine koala and a molester in a track suit (oh wait, that was the openers, Kid Koala and Dan Deacon)…

These were among the many freaks and geeks who dressed up for the Arcade Fire show at the Webster Bank Arena in Bridgeport, CT on a windy Tuesday night on March 18th. While talk of the costumes and pageantry of the attendees (and the drama it created online) dominated a lot of the reviews of the first leg of the Reflektor Tour, gimmicks and stunts couldn’t take away from a powerful and career-defining performance from what could be the biggest (literally, there were at least 15 musicians on stage at one time!) and most influential indie band of the 2000s.

Regine Chassigne and company

The show opened to a well-orchestrated curtain drop as the eponymous lead single from the double-album Reflektor, a shoe-in for several Grammys next year, filled the arena and forced even the slickest of hipsters to shuffle their feet. The band followed up on the energy of the audience and immediately went into the skank and shuffle of “Flashbulb Eyes,” which helped to establish the Rara polish much of their previous songs from other albums would receive.

For those who have the album and notice the obvious tonal differences in Arcade Fire’s new sound, Rara is a form of festival music usually played during Easter Week in the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, and Régine Chassagne’s (frontwoman and wife of Winn Butler) beloved Haiti, the country that her parents emigrated from before she was born. Before any recording of the new album, Butler and Chassagne visited Haiti and sort of felt a musical rebirth occur within them, and influenced much of the album’s music and lyrics. Another song played by the band that has obvious influences of a Carnival street parade is “Here Comes the Nighttime,” a song that features cultural accents like guiros, afro-influenced drumming, and an easy to chant chorus. The band was able to create a parade-like feel, shooting streamers, spilling confetti, and splashing lights during the performance.

Now that Arcade Fire has four commercially successful albums, deciding when and what to play where, and what not to play, comes at a Catch 22. Arcade Fire, an extremely fan-friendly band, is aware of the need to juggle new songs, old hits, and fan favorites. The band organized their albums into four different screen backdrops as the cast rotated different instruments. At any moment, band members Richard Reed Parry, Tim Kingsbury, Jeremy Gara, and Sarah Neufield would play musical chairs, so to speak, quickly dropping and picking up instruments not normally designated to them. Reflektor was the cohesive glue, and songs from Funeral, Neon Bible, and The Suburbs quickly adhered and adapted to the sticky core.

Butler looks at the masses

One of the more undissembled performances of the night was “Neighborhood #3 (Power Out),” which features some of the heavy guitars recorded on an Arcade Fire album. The set also featured sober moments, from the low-posture of loss innocence found in “The Suburbs,” to an appeal from Butler to raise money to support the construction of a nursing college in Haiti which was destroyed by the 2010 earthquake. But just like their songs, which cover a range of emotional extremes, the performance also attempted to find balance between the frantic and peaceful, the light and dark, or the loud and soft. Performed songs like “Ready to Start,” which features a very aggressive bass line and lyrics about a quarterlife crisis, pairs surprisingly well with the lush and dreamy rhythms and lyrics of “Haiti.” The latter of which at first seem like a baroque ode to her parent’s homeland, but later realizes that the lyrics are ardently haunting and contentious: Rien na’rrete nos espirits/Guns can’t kill what soldiers can’t see. Despite whatever musical genre the song is influenced by, the lyrics find a spirit within the human condition that is often at odds with a world filled with violence and ugliness. This perhaps is their best hand: they are unassumingly combative and assailing on a world filled with hypocrisy and hostility.

That is not to say that the entire night was filled with austerity. Winn Butler is actually quite a comedian, in his own right, influenced by the likes of Andy Kaufman, who doesn’t mind if the audience is in on the joke or not. For example, when the Reflektor Tour kicked off late last year in Brooklyn, the band allowed the audience to think that the performance would be in the front of the house, when theatrically, the band snuck out and played the back of the house, rewarding those who stumbled in late. The show in Bridgeport was not without its own set of pranks, one being, the use of an A and B stage (one front, one rear) within the arena, an ode to the previous Brooklyn stage high jinks. During the song “It’s Never Over (Hey Orpheus)”, Régine rose through the stage and performed the song with a dancing skeleton; later, Butler, Jeremy, and Owen Pallet used the same stage for a stellar performance of the lengthy “Supersymmetry.”

Fire Fire

The encore probably best demonstrates the Arcade Fire brand of humor. The band has recently taken to touring with giant papier-mâché heads and calling themselves “The Reflektors.” This group, heads and all, emerged from the floor of the B stage and announced that they are playing a cover song from a musician from each state they have toured in. “Butler” announced that they could either play “John Mayer or Hatebreed,” two CT natives. Instantly, “You’re Body is a Wonderland” played over the PA system, as several thousand pieces of red confetti was dumped on an incredulous group of fans in the cheap seats. The real Arcade Fire then arrived on the A stage, chiding “The Reflektors” for not choosing the Hatebreed song because “John Mayer is the worst guitar player in the world.” The band then erupted into an ironic rendition of “Normal Person.”Humorous, yet unusual, indeed.

the lovely couple
Even though the majority of the themes presented on their albums deal with death and isolation, Arcade Fire is able to undercut those feelings with joy, humor, and celebration, embracing the Rara, disguising the sense of loss each song features (from innocence to the polluted world) and adopting a sense of frolic revelry in the absolutism of death, found in the music of Island cultures. Arcade Fire has always commented on the fact that Americans are quite secluded, detached, and ultimately abandoned from the rest of the world, and The Reflektor Tour attempts to include the audience, allowing them to become part of the theatrics (no matter how silly some looked) and grandiosity that rock shows have become. Certainly, through art, music, and performance, Arcade Fire believes we can attempt to overcome isolation.