Papier
Misdirection, the essential tool of magicians and hustlers, served no less tactical a purpose for Arcade Fire in Brooklyn on Friday, in its first of three nights at the Barclays Center. At the top of the encore, a fake four-piece band calling itself the Reflektors - in oversize papier-mâché heads, suitable for a carnival - popped up on a platform in the middle of the arena to mime a version of 'Personality Crisis,' by the New York Dolls.
For a moment this seemed to be the answer to a question. One recent hallmark of 'Arcade Fire: Reflektor Tour,' which began in March and will end next Saturday with a homecoming in Montreal, has been a series of covers tailored to each stop on the tour. So the New York Dolls, a defining punk band, made sense. But why the canned music?
Win Butler, an indie-rock frontman of jittery self-possession, ended the ruse with his version of a reveal, sending heads swiveling back to the front of the room: 'Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome to the stage Buster Poindexter!' And before the crowd had a chance to process that unlikely statement, out walked Mr. Poindexter - the louche, pompadoured alter ego of David Johansen, former lead singer of the New York Dolls - to belt 'Hot! Hot! Hot!,' his 1987 hit, itself a reworking of a popular soca tune.
It segued easily, as if designed for this purpose, into 'Here Comes the Night Time,' a centerpiece of Arcade Fire's current album, 'Reflektor' (Merge). Inspired by Mr. Butler's recent experiences in Haiti, especially with the festive delirium of rara music, the tune rides several strains of bounding rhythm. True to form, it also has lyrics skeptical of missionary outreach ('If you want to be righteous, get in line'), and a description of heaven as a community with gates shut tight against the rabble and their rhythms.
'Reflektor,' which was produced by the dance-music savant James Murphy, came in for some accusations of white cultural appropriation when it was released last fall. Like the other complaints often hurled at the band - that it's too pretentious or precious, too given to earnestness or grandiosity - this one was half-effectively disarmed, and not just because the album made its debut at No. 1.
Régine Chassagne, a multi-instrumentalist and vocalist who plays a key role in shaping the band's sound, is the child of Haitian émigrés. (She happens to be married to Mr. Butler.) For the tour, the band's crowded roll call includes a pair of Haitian percussionists, Tiwill Duprate and Diol Edmond, whose spirited playing was often buried in the Barclays Center sound mix. But the deployment of Mr. Poindexter might have been a more direct rejoinder to the band's critics: an arch shrug and a wolfish grin.
Arcade Fire has always been a rousing live band, adept at building ragged momentum and participatory clamor. As in many of the band's past shows, this one hit high marks with some durable anthems from its debut album, 'Funeral,' from a decade ago. 'Ready to Start' and 'No Cars Go,' from two later albums, fared just as impressively. Rather than seeming worn out by weeks on the road, the band was in fighting form here.
But there's a bigger thesis behind 'Reflektor,' an idea of celebration at the edge of the abyss. The album borrows elements of the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, with their tragic underworld travails; it also seeks communion with 'Black Orpheus,' the 1959 film by Marcel Camus, which set that myth in a carnival setting in Brazil. During 'It's Never Over (Hey Orpheus),' Ms. Chassagne appeared on the mid-floor platform, surrounded by writhing dancers in skeleton suits, to sing her countermelody. She was facing the stage, where Mr. Butler sang back to her, across the sea of souls below.
Elsewhere the emphasis fell squarely on celebration. Dan Deacon, one of the opening acts, led a dance party, and Steve Mackey, the bassist in the English band Pulp, played a DJ set after the main show. During 'Afterlife,' one of the new album's more disco-heavy tracks, a figure in a mirror-ball suit slowly spun alone on the platform, reflecting splinters of light around the room.
Mr. Butler has said that 'Reflektor' owes something to Kierkegaard's 1846 essay 'The Present Age,' with its decrying of a 'reflective age,' in which envy trumps enthusiasm as a unifying principle of society. (Kierkegaard also carped that 'nothing happens, but there is instant publicity about it,' which sheds some light on how the album was promoted.)
Of course nothing trumps enthusiasm in the realm of Arcade Fire, not even a studied ambivalence. This show opened with the title track of 'Reflektor,' whose lyrics allude to the reflective age and an unshakable feeling of alienation. 'It's just a reflection of a reflection / Of a reflection of a reflection,' Mr. Butler yelped at one point, with ghostly echoes from Ms. Chassagne. They weren't talking about smoke and mirrors.
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