Song 52: Wake Up

Wake Up - Arcade Fire

I took a pretty long time getting into Arcade Fire, was into them for a while, and then have spent a fairly long time getting out of them. It's a shame, really.

I resolved to write about this song before I'd seen this particular clip, but it's pretty fitting and fortuitous, really. This is Arcade Fire singing 'Wake Up' with David Bowie, and it rather exemplifies why I won't quite be able to put up with as much Arcade Fire as I should. Cos it's a lot better when David Bowie's singing it, isn't it?

Don't get me wrong, this is a tremendous performance of a song I love, I'm not writing about it for any other reason that than I love it (though the cameraman seems overly fixated with Heather Graham's attendance), and I loved this song before I'd heard Bowie performing it with them, but in Win Butler's manic, hectoring yelp lies a lot of the problem. A bit like Jack White, he seems a very talented, right-on, likeable band leader but I'm always a little blocked from taking the work too seriously by the hystronics coming out of his mouth.

Arcade Fire have two lead vocalists - Win Butler handles about 80% of it, and his wife Regine Chassaigne about 20% and I nearly always prefer her songs - their last album 'The Suburbs', though widely acclaimed, was a real repetitive drag for me, and the only relief was Chassaigne's wonderful 'Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)' and I also love 'In the Backseat' from their brilliant debut 'Funeral'.

So is it just a mild aversion to Win Butler's voice that prevents me loving Arcade Fire? Perhaps it is, perhaps without it the other reasons I might give, which have turned into little irritations, would be forgiven and forgotten.

Are they a little self-righteous, repetive and hectoring? Maybe. Do they perform with a kind of deranged intensity which is at first wonderful and charming but then becomes a little offputting (check out young Michael Crawford lookalike Richard Reed Parry on the big drum in this clip)? Maybe. Are their second and third albums really just pale retreads of their masterpiece of a first? Almost certainly. But that's just me. Their fanbase and their acclaim is growing all the time, and gosh, their music has given me plenty of joy, so I'm going to stop talking about what's wrong with the Arcade Fire and get back to what's great about them.

Funeral. There's one great song with that name (by Band of Horses) and one great album. It's an album full of heart and soul and passion and great great tunes. As I said at the start, it took me a fair while to really get into it, though I bought it on day of release (it was just Win Butler's voice being offputting, I suppose, combined with the fact that the album's best songs are not at the start). It was 'Rebellion (Lies)' which got to me first, naturally enough, with its definitive pounding indie anthem beat (also see 'Chocolate' by Snow Patrol and 'Pounding' by Doves, which came first) and I remember listening to the whole album on my discman on the way back from Benicassim in 2006 and being entirely sold on it.

I was pretty ambivalent about the follow up 'Neon Bible' but still looking forward to seeing them headlining Latitude in the summer of 2007, and they didn't disappoint. 'Rebellion' was a particular highlight as was 'No Cars Go' but it was only then that I got to understand the true majesty of 'Wake Up'. When 30,000 without microphones bellow along in unison to 10 people on stage with microphones bellowing in unison, it really is a wonderful thing. I've rarely, if ever, felt so much part of the crowd, lost in the music, as in 'Wake Up' - it's a song with a pure anthemic majesty to it which all manner of misgivings about the band in general have failed to subdue. I finished that gig in love with the Arcade Fire.

I saw them again, a little later, and it was a really good gig, in Alexandra Palace, but for whatever reason, the magic wasn't quite there. It was a bit clumsy, the sound wasn't so great, it's quite a cavernous venue and seeing these songs for the second time couldn't quite repeat the trick. So i have scepticism about this band I'd usually have surrendered by now. They're tremendously talented and intelligent and likeable but I really hope they try something pretty different next, quieten it down, give a few more numbers to Regine Chassaigne, pound it a little less, stop trying to tell me something important they think I really need to know.