Arcade Fire Ba-rock Nelsonville with political anthems

By Jillian Mapes, Assistant Managing Editor

March 4, 2008 | 6:20 p.m.

Driving 14 hours from Montreal in a tiny passenger van, five members of the indie-rock canon Arcade Fire could not be more enthralled to play two free shows in a 450-seat opera house in Nelsonville, Ohio.

“We just wanted to be here,” Fire’s frontman Win Butler said. “Throwing our shit in a van and being able to play for you guys has been great.” Oh, the crazy things our friends from Canada will do for politics (or universal healthcare).

Thrown together in mere days by Ohio campaign workers, Arcade Fire’s back-to-back Sunday sets at Stuart's Opera House were in support of Sen. Barack Obama’s presidential campaign.

“I just find it kind of creepy that since I was nine months old, the same families have been in the presidency,” Butler said in a post-concert interview. “Obama’s the only candidate to really sit up against the war when it was unpopular to do so. There are many, many other reasons why I support Obama, but those are the two major ones.”

Butler has been spreading the gospel of Obama and unleashing a Clinton fury via the blog (“scrapbooks”) posted on the band’s personal Web site. The Clinton-bashing at Sunday’s show, however, was coy in comparison to Butler’s viral claims.

“I’m just saying, Colin [Stetson, the band’s horn player] plays sax better than Bill Clinton,” Butler said jokingly.

Playing two back-to-back shows to accommodate both the microscopic venue and the vast interest among residents of nearby college town Athens, Ohio, Arcade Fire launched into brief sets comprised of politically rebellious originals and calculated covers.

The band laid into a bare-bones, acoustic version of “Intervention,” but fans weren't missing Régine’s gleaming organ. Butler preluded the song by noting that it was written in the wake of the 2004 election.

“I, I will be king, and you, you will be queen,” Butler croons and yelps, as he covers the Bowie classic "Hereos." What a glorious kingdom that would be, with King Win and Queen Régine. It is difficult not to wish, albeit just briefly, for the reinstatement of a political monarchy in the U.S.

The choice of words written in electrical tape on Win’s acoustic guitar was another curious quirk of the concert. The Haitian phrase “Sak wide pa kanpe,” which translates to “what's empty can’t stand up," can be interpreted as both a political statement and a nod to wife Régine’s Haitian heritage.

The five members present -- Win Butler, Régine Chassagne, Will Butler, Jeremy Gara and Sarah Neufeld -- exhibit infectious energy during the first set. The small crowd stomps, claps and body-convulses along with the band during Arcade Fire gems, including Funeral’s "Neighborhood #3 (Power Out)" and "Wake Up." A crowd comprised of 450 voices sang every word in unison with the power and passion of 10,000 men.

Will Butler seems to purposely tangle himself up in electrical cords, falling to the ground and subsequently knocking over the bass guitar amp. He writhes on his back for a brief moment, basking in his own childlike bedlam.

The heavy piano lead-in of "Rebellion (Lies)" is matched by Sarah Neufeld's eerie violin, which brings a sense of dissonance to the whole get-up. Butler's foreboding political rhetoric adds to the temporarily brooding mood. He speaks of his religious, Texan roots and Canadian residency since 2000.

“I’ve been able to see my country from the outside,” Butler said. “It’s been a fuckin’ dark eight years.”

Although Butler expressed disenchanted feelings about recent presidential administrations, which he compared to the papacy while on stage, Butler said he did not leave the U.S. for political reasons and would not return to the states if Obama were elected.

“I just moved up there to play music," Butler said. "I didn’t move up there to get away from anything. I just have my wife there, and I live there. Montreal’s my town now.”

Arcade Fire’s first set ended with a synth-laden, frenzied feedback take on John Lennon’s “Gimme Some Truth.” Like Dylan, Lennon and Green Day before them, members of Arcade Fire have become the music world’s latest political crusaders. Butler pleads with the audience to vote Obama: “Thirty people in this room right now could decide the next election.”

As passionately as Butler spoke in favor of Obama, he also joked around about the candidate.

“I just want a president who can play basketball,” Butler said, flashing a smile.

An hour and a half later, the band burned for a change yet again, only this time with tired eyes, a modified set list and a request for the previous show’s attendees to go home and “surf the internet.”

One highlight from the second show came when Régine charmingly improvised by playing a jazzed-up, ragtime version of music from the classic video game “Super Mario Two.” Sheepishly at first, Régine later playfully tapped along the keyboard to kill time while the brothers Butler fiddled with electrical cords. The crowd roared in amusement at the diversion; Régine smiled to herself.

The anthems of society’s outcries against politics and religion never got old to the fans who traveled from as far away as Washington, D.C., to attend the Nelsonville shows. But members of Arcade Fire appeared thoroughly exhausted by the end of the second set.

Perhaps it was the realization that they would have to get up and drive to Cleveland in their dust-covered van the next day to do this all again that fuels their fatigue.

Or maybe, just maybe, the band’s exhaustion came from the political unrest that plagues the members every single day.

It could be, however, that Win lies awake at night next to his deliciously foreign wife in some Canadian church-turned-studio-turned-home, just contemplating the reasons why George Bush is lousy at basketball.

My money’s on the basketball thing. It's too humorous not to imagine.

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First show set list:

"Intervention"

"Keep the Car Running"

"Heroes" [David Bowie cover]

"A Change Is Gonna Come" [Sam Cooke cover]

"Rebellion (Lies)"

"Neighborhood #3 (Power Out)"

"Wake Up"

"Gimme Some Truth" [John Lennon cover]