Bell Orchestre news.

There's a new Bell Orchestre recording in progress.
We are working with John McEntire at
Soma Electronic Music Studios in Chicago.
It will be worth the wait.

This is good news. I really liked the orchestral take on post-rock that this lot had on Recording a Tape the Colour of the Light and with Arcade Fire off the road for a year hopefully they'll get over here at some point.

"Les Lumieres" live ...

Remember I said that I'd like to get a recording of that Arcade Fire Sam Cooke cover?

Torturegarden Shane obliges.

Members of Arcade Fire performing at a Barrack Obama Rally in Ohio on Sunday.

Due to the volume it gets almost unlistenable in the second half but I'd love to hear a decent recording of the Sam Cooke cover.

Remember the video of Arcade Fire playing with Springsteen?

There is some sort of precedent.

Oh and seemingly covering Cyndi Lauper wasn't a new thing either.

Arcade Fire are miserable fuckers.

This is hilarious. Skewers run of the mill lazy rock journalism perfectly. Well done Gemma.

The reason I've not been blogging for 2 days.

I was much closer than this.

Is 2 nights excessive at 50 bills a pop? Possibly.

Is showing up wellllll before door time to ensure a place near (actually right up) the front behaviour unbecoming of a 27 year old? Pretty much, though the feeling of patheticness was lessened somewhat around 22.47 last night when Richard Reed Parry (who, after observing him up close for 3+ hours over the course of 2 nights extract the most wondrous sounds from his guitars [and don't get me started on his Travis Bean], has firmly cemented a place for himself in my musical heroes list) told me that he saw me in almost the exact same spot both nights, then he called me "bro" .... I think. I was rather noticeably boisterous. Oh wait this bit was supposed to be formatted in the style of pithy questions and replies, sorry.

Back on track, am I literally unable to croak out a single word due to a combination of all the hollering I did and the cold I picked up and is my right bicep stiff and annoyingly sore due to all the fist pumping? Little bit.

Was it all worth it? Yep.

Anything I write at length recapping/reviewing the gigs could only appear to be a gushing display of fanboydom, I could quibble a bit about Win's vocals being low in the mix and the fact that for the first few songs he seemed a bit grumpy on the first night but night 2 was as close to perfect as I've ever seen a gig and pretty much the only way they could have entertained me better was if they'd let me pick the setlist (like I care if they're not sure how "Cars And Telephones" goes any more) and I would like to think that even though I write exclusively about music that I like/love/am interested in I retain some small level of critical detachment in what I blog about. So I'll save the gushing for Us Kids Know where it belongs. And more generally the tiny like-I'm-15-again crush I've developed on Marika Anthony-Shaw, how unprofessional for an amateur fake internet hack, the less said the better.

For cripes sake, they played "Headlights Look Like Diamonds."

More tickets on sale for Arcade fire in Pheonix Park

Both nights, they'll be gone quick.

Link!

Bruce Springsteen and Win And Regine from Arcade Fire

From last night via the good folks at trendwhore.

Bruce Stringsteen and Arcade Fire - State trooper
Uploaded by trendwhore

Bruce Stringsteen and Arcade Fire - Keep the car running
Uploaded by trendwhore

Follow the clues OR Jesus this whole Montreal thing is really incestuous.

Elementary

Calling Clues a Montreal supergroup might be pushing things a bit far but when you throw in the names of bands like Arcade Fire and The Unicorns then it's easy to see how people might lose the run of themselves. However the Arcade Fire involvement is limited the Brendan Reed.

"Who?" You might ask, "and what dozen instruments does he play in Win & Regine's travelling circus of freaks and oddities?". Well the simple answer is "these days nothing." Reed was a member of the band before the Arcade Fire EP was released but if you've investigated the pre-EP stuff he did feature in some of the early demos that have been floating around the web for the past couple of years.

Also involved (and, no offence to Reed but I love that Unicorns album, more excitingly) is Alden Penner, who was one of The Unicorns and had been thought to have left Montreal and moved to Australia following the dissolution of the band. Bethany Or (of Shaghai Triad who I'm utterly unfamiliar with) rounds off the trio.

Clues have an album ready to go apparently and this week posted an album sampler MP3 online, lots of lo-fi indie pop and some of it sounds quite good so I reckon they could be a band worth keeping an ear out for in the coming year.

MP3: Clues - Album Sampler
Mp3: Arcade Fire - Cars And Telephones from Early demos by the band, not sure if Reed played on this but it's a lovely tune and very different from what they've done since.

Arcade Fire gig sold out in minutes *SHOCKER*

All hell is breaking loose over on Jim Carroll's blog.

I got my ticket (thanks Lucy) so all the haters can go swivel.

Arcade Fire Irish Autumn date confirmed.

MCD wins again.

Wed October 24th.

Phoenix Park

Support from Clinic.

Tickets on sale Friday August 10th.

Edit: There was a link to the gig details here but it appears to have been taken down. Someone at TM forgot to hit a button to stop the details going live perhaps?

MP3: Arcade Fire - State Trooper (Bruce Springsteen cover) live from some gig in Canada at the end of the Funeral tour when they were sick of playing their own songs.