Who says schadenfreude is bad for the soul?
The band onstage included two French horns and two violins, building arrangements toward the orchestral. Yet even when the music sounded triumphal, as it did in “Intervention” — with pipe-organ chords, a martial beat and horns suggesting fanfares — the words said otherwise: “Every spark of friendship and love will die without a home/Hear the soldier groan, ‘We’ll go at it alone.’ ”Not that it was easy to make them out. A better audience question might have been “Why the Judson Church?” — an elegant space with a long artistic history and awful acoustics for a 10-piece, full-tilt rock band. In the bass-heavy room, the drums just about steamrolled the voices and upper-register instruments. For a band as careful about its textures as Arcade Fire is, choosing the church was a mistake.
The band has three more NYC dates May 7-9 (venue TBA). No word if the pikers at tickets.com will handle the sales for that show as well.
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