Arcade Fire Affirms Their Dominance

Arcade Fire Affirms Their Dominance

Arcade Fire has been the world’s leading indie rock band for some time now — arguably the world’s leading rock band period. And with the amount of exposure they get, it’s easy to start to think of them as young icons emeritus rather than musicians, to forget why they got so famous in the first place. Why did they, again? Oh, because they’ve written so many anthems that they don’t all fit in a 90-minute festival-closing set. (It doesn’t help when they insist on playing “Joan Of Arc,” but whatevs.) All the Funeral songs still slay, obviously, but so does “No Cars Go” and “Ready To Start” and “Afterlife” and, hey, why not “Heart Of Glass” with Debbie Harry too? If this band is boring, it’s only because at some point we started taking their excellence for granted.