Photos by: Morgan Hotston –
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Review by: Curtis Sindrey –
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TORONTO, ON – JULY 22, 2018: Arcade Fire performs at Budweiser Stage in Toronto on July 22, 2018. (Photo: Morgan Hotston/Aesthetic Magazine)
Montreal indie rockers Arcade Fire made a welcomed return to Budweiser Stage last night during their ongoing tour in support of their fifth studio album, Everything Now (out now via Sonovox/Columbia).
Polarizing upon release, Everything Now is equal parts classic Arcade Fire, and experimental over-indulgence, but that didn’t stop the near capacity Toronto crowd from igniting a venue-wide dance party during the anthemic “Wake Up”, and “Rebellion (Lies)”, and set-list staples “Ready To Start”, and “Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)”.
“Toronto was the first city where people lined up to see us”, said frontman Win Butler, and the crowd responded in kind with a deafening roar of approval.
The evening took a brief political turn during the set’s latter half as Butler took on the ongoing immigration conflict in the U.S. and elsewhere, saying “we can’t turn around immigrants at our borders. We need to accept them in Canada. Enough of this racist bullshit.”
Arcade Fire makes you feel like everything is going to be okay even if the world is falling down around you, and on this night fans felt a satisfying collective catharsis that we all need once in a while.
While Everything Now serves as Arcade Fire’s weird teenager phase, both in terms of its disappointing offering of “infinite content” and bungled promotional roll-out, they once again proved that despite the mid-career mistakes, they will continue to wow arena audiences for the foreseeable future.
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Arcade Fire
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Hamilton Leithauser
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