I went to Lollapalooza this past weekend (thanks to my boyfriend taking me), and I had a semi-spiritual reaction to seeing Arcade Fire live. They closed the festival Sunday night (well, with Soundgarden across the park, but really - who goes to see Soundgarden in 2010?), and though I did not own all of their songs, I was looking forward to it. I was not as big of a fan as I wished to be of Arcade Fire prior to the show because, simply, I am a lazy, lazy music fan. I'll get on random kicks of downloading tons of new music, but it's not unheard of for me to go months before realizing one of my favorite artists released a new album...Yes, it's embarrassing.

Regardless, I had heard for years from multiple people that Arcade Fire was literally one of the best - if not the best - live shows they'd ever seen. Now I know why. In a digital-electronic age where so many bands nearly negate an incredible debut album because they cannot perform the same material live (MGMT and, much less severely, Sleigh Bells come to mind), it was incredibly refreshing to watch Arcade Fire. Here's a band that's not fucking around: they are all impeccable instrumentalists, some multi-instrumentalists switching back and forth effortlessly, and you can just tell that they really enjoy and believe in the music they're making. They came off to me both in performance and dialogue with the audience as very professional musicians. Since they were on the same stage before Arcade Fire went on, all I could think was, "MGMT should be very, very ashamed right now."

It was apparent that everyone else in the audience - thousands - felt the exact same way, except it was more of an emotional experience for the ones who were hardcore fans. It had me wishing I knew all the words to every single song. Next time I will. I would not hesitate to see them again.

We left early to beat the dreaded festival traffic and subway-clogging, but hesitated because they had not yet played "Wake Up." While it was probably somewhat worth it to beat the rest of the crowd, this would have been breathtaking to see. I'll let this performance from Glastonbury three years ago make up for that missed experience: