Review: Arcade Fire dazzles at Bell Centre, but questions remain

Music isn't experienced in a vacuum.

So, would the leader of the band we had all come to see address the fact that five people have come forward to accuse him of sexual misconduct?

It’s not exactly the question you would choose to have in your head as you go to a concert, is it?

It’s a fair one, though, and it surely needed asking as Arcade Fire, arguably the most popular and beloved band to come out of Montreal, returned to the city for the final date of the “We” tour, their first since Pitchfork’s report of the first four of those stories (there was a fifth last week) that caused many longtime fans to wonder whether Win Butler was who they thought he was.

It’s not as if anyone last night was really demanding or expecting a full mea culpa — or, conversely, a passionate denial — from the stage. A simple acknowledgement would have sufficed. Dispiritingly, though, none was forthcoming. It seems that in the brief gap between Pitchfork’s report and the start of the We tour, a decision was taken in the Arcade Fire camp: Don’t talk about it. And they didn’t.

Part of what makes this story so wrenching is that last night’s concert was full of reminders of why this band has meant so much to so many — and still do, if the rapturous response of Saturday night’s 10,500-strong, multi-generational Bell Centre crowd is any indication. While every one of those attendees will have had reasons of their own for attending, clearly Montreal isn’t prepared to give up on this band.

Opening act Boukman Eksperyans had the challenge of starting their set when the crowd had only begun trickling in, and did as well as could be expected in the circumstances. A veteran eight-piece, genre-blending, spiritually and politically charged Haitian band, their album Kalfou Danjere is a masterpiece that has been awaiting broader discovery since its 1992 release. The awkward insertion of some heavy-handed metal-style guitar notwithstanding, they turned in an inspiring set. Even here, though, it was tough to ignore the elephant in the room: the band were on this tour, after all, because others — first Feist, then Beck — had decided they didn’t want to be, and everyone in the building knew it.

Arcade Fire have never been a band where you particularly notice individual instrumental contributions; rather, they’re an ensemble in the truest sense of the word, subsuming ego for the benefit of the collective sound, swapping instruments with dizzying glee, supporting the songs with nuance and force. The absence of Will Butler and his madcap stage presence was felt; Win’s younger brother, who left the band in March, will be remembered by many as the one who used to throw instruments straight up to implausible heights and catch them at the last possible instant. There was no such throwing of things on this night. Maybe it’s thought that the time for such youthful daredevilry has passed. Or maybe it’s just an insurance issue.

In a set that spanned the band’s career (The song count by album: Funeral, five; Neon Bible, two; The Suburbs, three; Reflektor, three; Everything Now, two; We, five. And one other song, of which more later) and a performance that alternated between a main stage and a smaller, centrally placed round one, a surprise emerged, one that perhaps shouldn’t have been so surprising: Régine Chassagne was the star of the show. All night you felt that she was the engine of the band — musically, emotionally — especially when the home stretch featured a devastating one-two punch of songs on which she takes the lead. Haiti and Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains) — one a lament for the country of her parents’ birth, the other an anthem for the generations who have grown up in the supposedly soulless North American suburbs — make the case for Arcade Fire as a great band, and for Chassagne as every bit her husband’s equal in importance. This was also when members of Boukman Eksperyans began coming back onstage to augment the band; ironically the show ended up being enriched in ways it never could have been with either Feist or Beck opening.

Music isn’t experienced in a vacuum. As listeners we develop a relationship with musicians, and just as in our everyday personal relationships, we expect to be afforded the respect of not being manipulated or deceived. Win Butler has shown a rare gift for writing empathetically about the young and vulnerable, so it’s genuinely upsetting to learn that, among other things, he has been sexting young female fans.

The subtext of last night’s concert was underlined, albeit without acknowledgement, during the encore. Dropping perhaps a few too many f-bombs in the process, Butler introduced Leonard Cohen’s Bird On The Wire with an anecdote about being a new arrival in Montreal and seeing Cohen randomly on the street one day; this, Butler said, was the moment when he knew he had come to the right city. As he proceeded into the song, Cohen’s theme of regret and apology was placed in stark relief: these were the words of a man asking forgiveness for being “unkind” and “untrue”. With his wife sitting nearby playing a cello, and with thousands of people around him offering their support, it was all but impossible not to think Butler was addressing the song to her, and to the 10,500. But what about a certain five other people? Does “We” include everyone but them?

Win Butler needs to say a lot more.

1. 

   Sexual allegations cast a shadow on Arcade Fire's Bell Centre show

2. 

   Women accuse Arcade Fire's Win Butler of sexual misconduct: report

ianmcgillis2@gmail.com