Arcade Fire/Alderney Landing, Dartmouth, Nova Scotia/July 28th 2011
Arcade Fire were back in Nova Scotia for the first time since Funeral was released. Win Butler asked the crowd if anybody in the audience attended that show at the Marquee in 2005. He said that was the last show they played before the album was released. Since that time, the band has gone from a little collective of Montreal based friends to a Grammy, and pretty much every other major award, winning band. The show had a festival feel to it as they did not have their usual “The Suburbs” marquee and video screen set up. They still played a full set with the tunes you would expect, a handful of songs from the Suburbs including “Suburban War” and old favourites that kept the crowd dancing, fist pumping, and singing along throughout the night. Owen Pallett, who also opened the show, joined the band on stage ten songs in and contributed violin for the rest of the night. At one point in the show, one of the flashing glowing balls from Coachella was being bounced around the crowd prompting Win to announce that a visitor from California had made it’s way to Dartmouth. Despite being confined to a smaller stage than they are used to, the band brought their usual amount of energy and seemed to thoroughly enjoy playing to the lively crowd. After spending a few days driving around Nova Scotia, Win mentioned that he enjoyed the place. Hopefully we’ll see them on this side of the coast more frequently than every six years.
