Live Review: Arcade Fire at Malahide Castle

The angsty teenager in me who first fell in love with Neon Bible all the way back in 2007 (could it really be ten years ago?) and who fell in love with every consecutive Arcade Fire album since then, took on the much-coveted role of being an objective Hot Press reviewer at Malahide Castle knowing full well that I had more than a hint of bias in his capacity… It helped that I’d crossed paths with the Canadian art-rock band two weeks earlier at Primavera Sound Festival and knew just how on form they were, but I’ll post a disclaim that I was all geared up to lavish praise on Arcade Fire before they’d even hit the stage.

Some sense of vindication, then, whenever the first piano strains of their newest single ‘Everything Now’ rang out from the stage and the members of Arcade Fire slide comfortably into their stations as offbeat, unique, and thoroughly entertaining rock stars.

Beautifully in tune with each other and with their audience, they followed up with ‘Rebellion’, a shrewd move that collectively had tens of thousands of people singing along to the chorus while chewing mouthfuls straight from the metaphorical Arcade Fire palm.

From there, they dusted the cobwebs off some of their oldest tracks, mixing them in with solid fan favourites. Some of the more surprising highlights of the set included a smoke-filled, xylophone-chiming, crescendo-building rendition of ‘Neighbour 3 (Power’s Out)’, the Régine Chassagne-helmed ‘Sprawl II (Mountains Over Mountains)’ and the ever-prophetic ‘Windowsill’.

As well as opening with 'Everything Now', the band played two new songs from their upcoming album. ‘Creature Comfort’ had already been teased earlier on in the day, with Arcade Fire hiding cereal boxes with the song’s title on it all over Dublin. They also debuted a groovy new track called ‘No Signs of Life’, which bore some of the hallmarks of Daft Punk (Thomas Bangalter is a co-producer on the band’s fifth album) by ways of new-wave pioneers Talking Heads. It's all very exciting stuff for those who are looking forward to their new album as much as we are.

Arcade Fire finished the set with ‘Wake Up’, arguably the most rousing song of the last fifteen years. Lungs seemed absolutely fit to burst as the crowd chanted along to this most exultant of encores.

And if I'm pushed to talk about negative aspects of the set, I might say that Regine Chassagne seemed somewhat at a loss while singing 'Haiti', her first solo song of the night. I might also criticise the fact that the glorious stretch in the weather meant we couldn’t fully experience the on-stage visuals during songs like ‘Neon Bible’ and ‘Reflektor’...but on that point, I’d really be a fool if I criticised the good weather in Ireland wouldn’t I?

After leaving the stage, the band had one more surprise left in store. For those lucky enough to get tickets (and negotiate a quick exit from the bottle-necked Malahide Castle), the full band played a stripped back version of ‘Creature Comfort’ in the intimate venue of Whelan’s after their gig. It was a sing-along, stage-invading closer to the night, and one of that reaffirmed the well-known fact that when Arcade Fire find themselves before an Irish crowd, they really give it their all...