Wednesday, June 2, 2010
Cream Calendar Arcade Fire to Play the Ryman, Aug. 9 [Belated Announcement]
Posted by Adam Gold on Wed, Jun 2, 2010 at 2:52 PM
Many of you may have already heard about this, some of you are thrilled to now find out, and the rest of you are probably rolling your eyes and forgetting how, if you were going through tough times in ’04 and ’05, this band was there to comfort you with their uber-uplifting debut Funeral — the Pitchfork generation’s Joshua Tree. In ’07, they followed that up with Neon Bible — a record that rivaled the Eddie and the Cruisers OST on the Springsteen-apage meter. I mean all of that favorably. The Arcade Fire were such a critically lauded blog-trending juggernaut that the contrarion in me wanted desperately to loathe them, but alas, I’m a sucker for some heavy-handed rock anthems if the songs are as gloriously grand as the gestures behind them. The more I absorbed The Arcade Fire’s ubiquitous debut and haunting follow-up, the more I drank the Kool-Aid and sided with their zealots. It felt good to believe the hype. It also felt good to see Merge Records put out a release that debuted in Billboard's Top 10 — as was the case with Neon Bible.
In 2007, I trekked down to Hotlanta to see the band’s reputedly rousing live show for myself. What a deal-sealer that was. As a dedicated rockist, I hunger for the band who can melt the cynical iceman that lives inside my heart to a weepy puddle — a band that can transform me from a critic into a fan, and this band could. The show I saw — in which audience members scurried towards the stage like mice before climbing onto each other’s shoulders on command from frontman Win Butler, percussionists risking life and limb by dangling from the rafters, and band members handling their axes like Pentecostal preachers handling rattlesnakes, all set to the drone of a massive pipe organ — had me convinced that, of all of the decade’s rock ‘n’ roll hopefuls, this was the one I might actually see ascend to stadium-status and stay there for 20 years.
While the tour they announced yesterday does see them headlining Madison Square Garden, The Mother Church will play host to a long-awaited Nashville stop — I believe their first ever in Music City. As stated above, the show is set for Monday, Aug. 9 — less than a week following the release of their forthcoming third LP, The Suburbs, which drops stateside Aug. 3. Tickets are $39-$49 and can be purchased here. You can pre-order The Suburbs in a myriad of media — from Apple Lossless to double 12-inch 180g vinyl — on the band’s official website.
You can also preview a pair of tracks from the record right here. The first, titled “Month of May,” sounds like Kenny Loggins giving the Footloose treatment to The Lost Boys — oh, what could’ve been — while the title track is a bouncy baroque-pop toe-tapper. If you long to hear them on some tangible wax, then stop by Grimey’s, where they’re giving away a couple copies of a sought-after limited-edish 12-inch single by way of raffle. The store is accepting entries all week and will draw the winners at Saturday’s Beer:30 party featuring Johnny Quaid's Ravenna Colt.
While Merge’s answer to How I Became the Bomb, Spoon, will open a handful of the Fire's East Coast dates, there’s no word yet on who will support them at the Ryman. Let’s hope it’s someone good. Budding indie stars The National opened the show I saw in '07. They’re their own entity now. In fact, I just saw on Pollstar that they’re slated to headline The Ryman themselves on Oct. 3. We’ll give you more deets on that show soon.
Are any of you brah-hams as stoked as I am?
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