Live!
Big Red Says “Bonjour” to Phoenix – Cornell University, October 17, 2010
While the show last Sunday didn’t include an appearance by fellow Parisians Daft Punk and wasn’t quite up to MSG proportions, Phoenix seriously dazzled the crowd with their epically entrancing anthems last Sunday night.
“When they told us we’d be playing on a Sunday night, we didn’t think anyone would show up,” lead singer Thomas Mars said to Cornell University’s packed gym October 17th. Ce n’est pas vrai, Monsieur Mars, all of Ithaca has been anxiously awaiting your arrival since the day the Big Red announced the show.
Before the French rockers took to the stage, the alt-country group Jenny and Johnny kept heads bobbing with a half-hour set filled with cuts from their debut album, “I’m Having Fun Now.”
But it wasn’t until Phoenix leapt onstage and the opening chords of their smash hit “Lisztomania” exploded in euphoric crescendoes that the crowd screamed with delight. One triumphant jump into the crowd later and Mars stumbled back to the stage beaming.
While casual listeners of Phoenix may have waited anxiously for “that song on that car commercial,” the band’s Sunday night set should have sent them straight back to their computers for the rest of “Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix.”
“Love Like A Sunset” eerily crept into the set, as a huge white sheet tumbled from the rafters and hung in front the stage. Colored lights reflected on the sheet, and the crowd watched in awe as silhouettes of Deck d’Arcy, Laurent Brancowitz, and Christian Mazzalai painted sonic landscapes with their guitars and bass. The floor trembled as deep tones and face-melting bass cut through the gym.
“Rome” transcended into a whirlwind of Mazzalai’s charged guitar playing and Mars’ pristine vocals, while “Girlfriend” pulsed with booming drums and synth beats. Throw in a rainbow light spectacle and the French rockers set the standard high for another legendary Big Red show.
Phoenix’s set was mostly an ode to “Wolfgang Amadeus,” but even their lesser-known tracks hit big with the adoring audience. When the band returned for an encore, the crowd as one threw their hands into the air and danced to the funky beats of “If I Ever Feel Better,” a relatively unknown, electronic inspired track from their debut album, “United.” “Consolation Prizes” spurred fans to jump in time to its fast, pop-rock-y guitar riffs, and “Everything is Everything,” a quiet, acoustic ballad by Mars and Mazzalai, is sure to have left the crowd scrambling to YouTube in search for the band’s previously little known work.
After several encore songs, Mars thanked the audience and threw himself and the crowd into a long-awaited version of “1901.” Just when the audience thought the song and their state of rapturous bliss was over, Mars jumped from the stage and crowd-surfed his way all around the entire gym, microphone in hand, as Mazzalai looked on from atop one of the speakers, jamming as if his life depended on it. Phoenix concluded with one last cacophonous verse of “1901,” with raucous cheering from the crowd, thus ending another concert for the books…
Brooklyn duo begins tour with crazy dance party in Syracuse
Matt & Kim aren’t more than a simple keyboard and drum kit combo, and that’s quite all right. The Brooklyn duo delivered an energy- packed set with an incendiary sound and huge smiles during their tour opener at Syracuse’s Westcott Theater Wednesday, September 15.
Syracuse’s own Phantom Chemistry opened the show with 30 minutes of the repetitive shredding guitar and muffled vocals, but when Brooklyn buddies So So Glos walked on stage, the mood kicked up with a set of danceable tunes and catchy riffs. Despite their high energy, the audience anxiously awaited Matt & Kim’s arrival.
Based on their impromptu dance breaks and acrobatic maneuvers, a well-mannered psychiatrist might be quick to diagnose the band mates, but singer and keyboardist Matt Johnson and drummer Kim Schifino were just elated to be on stage again. Beaming at the audience and occasionally climbing on top of her bass drum to beat wildly at the symbols, Schifino sparkled in her position at the drum set. When he wasn’t jumping from his seat at the keyboard or scaling the stage, Johnson frequently paused mid-song to flash the crowd a huge grin.
Their hour plus show was filled with all the usual hits – “Lessons Learned” spurred a mass sing-along, and “Good Ol’ Fashion Nightmare” was a reminder that a band doesn’t need a large ensemble to produce a bigger-than-life sound.
While Matt & Kim’s live tunes do not stray far from their original tracks, their energy sets the recorded material apart from an experience in their on-stage setting. With the occasional shout of “Let’s go Syracuse!,” Johnson and Schifino completely threw themselves into pumping up the crowd, and the audience happily screamed in return. The duo only stopped playing to tell stories of their past trips to Syracuse, but Matt & Kim were there to dance and party hard.
In addition to their old favorites, Matt & Kim unveiled “I’ll Take Us Home,” a track they never before played live, and “Cameras,” the latest single for their upcoming album Sidewalks, to raucous cheers from fans.
“Better Off Alone” was a euphoric club mix, with Johnson cranking out simple synth beats and Schifino’s steady but driving pitter-patter sending the bouncing crowd to a state of climatic bliss.
“We have one more song left,” Johnson said, as the crowd tingled with excitement. “I believe this the first time we’ve played this song in this city. I’m just glad you are all the first people to experience it in Syracuse.”
The crowd exploded when the long-awaited first notes of “Daylight” reverberated through the club, and fans geared up for one last crazy dance party. The band lifted up the packed theater into a sea of jumping, flailing, pulsing bodies that sang along to every word. The anthem came to a bittersweet close, and both Johnson and Schifino threw themselves into an adoring crowd.
The lights popped back on and Matt & Kim’s passionate rave came to a close. Audience members reluctantly filed out of theater into the night with smiles as big as Johnson’s and Schifino’s, because as Matt & Kim say, “in the daylight anywhere feels like home.”
Arcade Fire Leaves MD Audience Spellbound -Merriweather Post Pavilion, August 6, 2010
We knew they were good, but who would ever imagine that Montreal-based indie rockers could deliver a scintillating 90 minute set with a sound bigger than the night sky? While Merriweather Post Pavilion is certainly no Madison Square Garden, Arcade Fire emerged with explosive energy in Maryland Friday night after a two date stop at the legendary NYC arena.
The band paraded through a collection of old favorites and new tunes from “The Suburbs,” Arcade Fire’s third studio effort. While the latest album had only been out for a few days, the crowd sang along with an opening “Ready to Start” and jammed joyfully to a subsequent version of “Month of May.” Even when technical difficulties with their drum machines prevented the band from finishing “Half Light II (Celebration),” fans cheerfully screamed for more.
Regine Chassagne, singer-drummer-hurdy-gurdy extraordinaire, skipped and twirled her way through “Sprawl II,” leaving the amphitheater in a trance, as they fixated on her chillingly beautiful voice and swayed to backing synth beats that would make Depeche Mode proud.
When Arcade Fire wasn’t belting out the latest tune from “The Suburbs,” the Canadian rockers revived “Funeral” and “Neon Bible” cuts with similar splendor. “Tunnels” and “No Cars Go” received new life as the band switched instruments with every song and flailed and stomped wildly in time to the beat, constantly in fiery motion while playing the hell out of whatever was in front of them. Frontman Win Butler didn’t need a huge stage to conduct the mass cacophony of sound exploding around him. Violins soared, guitarist Richard Parry cooked up some positively incendiary reverbs, while Will Butler hopped from keyboards to drum with enough jumping, shimmying, and shaking to make Mick Jagger throw in the towel.
With Bono-esque flair and passion, Win Butler managed to make a few trips to audience below and even told the crowd that he held a summer job at a venue similar to Merriweather when he was a kid. “I used to let people sneak down to come closer to the front,” Butler said. “It was my favorite part of the job.”
“Rebellion (Lies)” triggered a massive outpouring of extreme excitement, and the amphitheater cheered for more during the following encore break. And maybe the greatest part is that Arcade Fire is clearly flying high with the success of “The Suburbs” and their recent slot at MSG – the band managed to lift up their captive audience and embrace them with a exultant, full sound. When this band begins to play, dreams are suddenly possible, if only for the moment.
Finally, the crowd screamed in delight as the opening chords to a long-awaited, rousing version of “Wake Up” filled the amphitheater and the ground trembled with the sound of 15,000 fans jumping and singing along to every word. Amid mass a chorus of “whoah-ohs,” Butler sprung to the crowd, microphone cord wrapped around his neck, as he managed to belt out the last lines of the finale anthem, then returned to stage for a triumphant wave goodbye.
Life is good when Arcade Fire comes to town.
Here’s last night’s setlist:
- Ready to Start
- Month of May
- Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)
- The Well and the Lighthouse
- Half Light II (No Celebration) – cut short
- Neighborhood #2 (Laika)
- No Cars Go
- Haiti
- Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)
- The Suburbs –with The Suburbs II
- Modern Man
- Rococo
- Intervention
- We Used to Wait
- Neighborhood #3 (Power Out)
- Rebellion (Lies)
- Keep the Car Running –Encore
- Wake Up –Encore
Flaming Lips with Stardeath and White Dwarfs – Cornell University: April 18, 2010
Flaming Lips frontman Wayne Coyne promised a packed Cornell gym Sunday night that the forthcoming show would be legendary, only rivaling a performance by the Grateful Dead back in 1977 at the very same gym in Ithaca, NY. Much to the delight of eccentrically dressed concert-goers, the show proved to be just that, with a night filled with dancing “orange people,” giant, green laser hands, an enormous Coyne-sized plastic beach ball, and showers of confetti and balloons.
Coyne spun right into the crowd with exuberant amounts of energy – literally – as he managed to sing the opening “The Fear,” and roll around within a clear plastic ball as the band jammed in the background. The Lips seemed determined to emanate with electrifying liveliness, encouraging fans to shoot beams of laser light at a set of giant hands and disco ball. Guitarist Steven Drozd rocked old favorites “The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song” and “She Don’t Use Jelly” with a fist-pumping, pounding force that kept the Cornell gym rocking, shaking, and jumping to the Lips’ crazy synth beats.
After a short break, the Lips returned with two chillingly beautiful renditions of Pink Floyd’s “Brain Damage” and “Eclipse.” “All that you touch/ All that you see/ All that you taste/ All you feel/ All that you love,” Coyne wailed, with opening act Stardeath and the White Dwarfs on stage for support.
The crowd begged for more, and the Lips appeared for one last song, closing out the night with touching words from Coyne and a heart-throbbingly perfect version of “Do You Realize??.” As confetti and balloons cascaded from the ceiling in swirls of color, fans screamed with excitement and reveled in the sheer emotion and joy of the show’s final moment. The crowd slowly shuffled out of the confetti littered gym with one known fact: April 18, 2010 was going down in the books as Cornell’s greatest show.
