Home Live For Live Music Arcade Fire Bring Impressive Infinite Content Tour To Madison Square Garden

Arcade Fire Bring Impressive Infinite Content Tour To Madison Square Garden [Photo/Video]

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Arcade Fire brought their Infinite Content Tour to Madison Square Garden on Tuesday. The band showed off a brand-new setup with a square-shaped, boxing-ring-themed stage and a wild new production that featured a moving light rig and multiple huge disco balls. The band delivered a career-spanning set list, with songs from classic albums FuneralReflektor, and The Suburbs mixed in with a healthy dose of material from their new album, Everything Now.

Arcade Fire knows how to throw a great party, and the band always make sure to bring great support acts on the road with them. For Tuesday’s show in New York City, the band tapped Preservation Hall Jazz Band for a short, thirty-minute opening set and iconic Hip Hop DJ Grandmaster Flash for an hour-long DJ set ahead of Arcade Fire’s headlining performance. Flash, unfortunately, came off as a bit stale and was ultimately pulled from the stage a few minutes before his scheduled end time. The Montreal natives themselves emerged just after 9:00 pm to a raucous applause, as an announce whipped the crowd into a frenzy with his dramatic introduction.

The band opened the show with “Everything Now” and “Signs of Life” from their new album, Everything Now, before whipping out an old classic, “Rebellion (Lies).” The band worked through a version of “Here Comes The Night Time” and brought out Haitian dancers for their performance of “Haiti” before turning in a powerful version of Neon Bible standout “No Cars Go”. If you’re familiar with Arcade Fire’s live experience, then you know the rest of the story. The band continued to feature old classics—”Neon Bible”, “Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)”, “Afterlife”—while also dedicating a portion of the night to their Grammy Award-winning album, The Suburbs. The band played “The Suburbs”, “The Suburbs (Continued)”, “Ready To Start”, and “Sprawl II” in succession towards the end of the set. After smoke-machine-aided performances of Everything Now songs “Infinite Content” and “Creature Comfort”, the band brought the set to a close with “Neighborhood 3 (Power Out)” from Funeral.

For the encore, the band delivered a delicate version of “We Don’t Deserve Love”, a ballad from the new record, before reprising “Everything Now (Continued)”, during which Preservation Hall Jazz Band slowly joined them on stage. They then added horns to Arcade Fire’s classic closing song, “Wake Up”, before walking off stage with the band and leading the group second-line-style into the crowd, to the backstage area, and eventually out into Penn Station, the major train hub that is located directly underneath Madison Square Garden.

It was a triumphant end to a big evening for Arcade Fire, who are just now getting started on the most ambitious tour of their career. The stage, the lights, smoke, video content—everything was so thought out and big—it all seemed like a realization of sorts for this band. Arcade Fire was always the “Arena” indie band, with the band sporting a big sound that was meant for a larger room. Well, there they were, playing in the round in front of at least 16,000 people with a giant square stage, a huge moving light rig, giant disco balls on each side of the floor, and video content created specifically for each song. It was a sight to behold. With an album called Everything Now and a tour called Infinite Content, it makes sense to overwhelm the senses a bit, and that’s just what Arcade Fire did.

The show was not without its faults, however, as an uneven vocal mix plagued the first half of the show. Frontman Win Butler finally asked for his vocals to be turned down halfway through the show, and that seemed to help a bit. Both guitar players—Richard Reed Parry and Tim Kingsbury—could be seen arguing with their guitar techs at various points throughout the night, and the show definitely had a few other kinks that could be worked out. All in all, Arcade Fire have the ability to be one of the best live bands in the world on their best nights. Last night wasn’t one of their best nights, but it was still an extremely enjoyable show. The band is up there as one of the most creative, passionate, and unique bands in the world today.

Check out a few videos from the show below. Also below, you can find a few videos from the band’s second line through Madison Square Garden and into Penn Station. Finally, enjoy a gallery of photos from the concert by photographer Joe Russo.

“No Cars Go”

[Video: Hellspawn 3000]

“Reflektor”

[Video: Iron Chef Wong]

“Wake Up” with Preservation Hall Jazz Band

[Video: Hellspawn 3000]

Post-Show Second Line

[Videos: Anson Kendall]

Arcade Fire Setlist Madison Square Garden, New York, NY, USA 2017, Infinite Content

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