Arcade Fire live up to billing with incendiary Phoenix Park show

Few bands have captured the devotion of the music-loving Irish public quite as emphatically as the Montreal group Arcade Fire…

Few bands have captured the devotion of the music-loving Irish public quite as emphatically as the Montreal group Arcade Fire.

Every concert is greeted with feverish anticipation and fast-selling tickets - their two shows in the big top in the Phoenix Park on Tuesday and last night were their fourth and fifth shows here this year.

Husband and wife duo Win Butler and Regine Chassagne and their anarchic band are the hottest ticket on the live music scene these days, and with each performance their untouchable status is further burnished.

The huge marquee in the Park, erected to host gigs while the Point is closed for extensive renovations, prompted memories of the seven-member act's first gig here, a deservedly fabled performance at Electric Picnic in 2005. That show, just months after their first album, Funeral, was released here, saw them on the cusp of the wave of international superstardom, and their incendiary performance left no one in any doubt as to their upward trajectory.

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Since then, they have become firmly established as one of the most important, and popular, bands in the world, appealing to everybody from music-obsessed teenagers to middle-aged professionals. Every variety of Arcade Fire fan was in evidence last night, as the crowds made their way to the "Big Top", which, according to promoters MCD, was the "largest single-tented structure ever erected in Ireland".

The inside of the tent was filled with neon and red velvet before the ten members took to the stage, launching into Black Mirror, quickly following it with Keep The Car Running, and not letting the pace slack after that.

Both Funeraland this year's Neon Biblewere given a good airing, with Win Butler doing his best messianic ringleader shtick, while his younger brother Will and Richard Reed Parry settled into their demented percussion groove.

Small cameras on their microphones gave us close-up images of the members as they ramped up the atmosphere, before they finished with an arms-in-the-air, voice-straining encore of Interventionand Wake Up. With performances as exhilarating as this, it's obvious why the fans keep coming back for more.