Energetic Arcade Fire delivers climactic show

Arms outstretched, looking like the letter T in a sparkly gold dress, she didn't sing the song so much as exorcise it from her shiny self like some trespassing spirit.

And in more ways than one, Regine Chassagne was speaking of ghosts.

"Mes cousins jamais nes hantent les nuits de Duvalier," the Arcade Fire multi-instrumentalist sang, eyes closed, as if mesmerized by her own voice. "Rien n'arrete nos esprits."

Translation: "My never-born cousins haunt the nights of Duvalier.

"Nothing stops our spirits."

The song was "Haiti," the country where Chassagne's parents emigrated from to her native Montreal during the reign of dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier, hence the reference to the despot in the tune.

It all seems a little droll on paper, right?

Like something you might find in a history major's iPod.

Not exactly the stuff of overheated rock shows where drunken chicks dance in dizzy circles and dudes pump their fists like they just bedded an entire pyramid of cheerleaders.

And yet that's exactly what went down at a sold-out Joint on Thursday night, even during the aforementioned number, which was one of the more contemplative moments of a show about as subdued as a soccer riot.

This is Arcade Fire's defining trait, the ability to take plenty of art-rock conceits -- chaotically arranged songs, weighty subject matter, a clear understanding of their own significance -- and turn them all into stadium-rock bluster of the highest caliber.

Yes, the group's on an independent label, but it's time to stop labeling them an indie rock band: This is an arena rock act through and through, and more than just about any other band of their ilk, they're able to effectively project their ambitions to a mass audience.

They do so with the emphasis on the overblown.

Arcade Fire's climactic, pupil-contracting display of light and sound at the Hard Rock Hotel began with an opening salvo akin to a cannonball fired at close range: From "Month of May," which the band played with teeth bared, guitarists headbanging, the group raced straight into "Rebellion (Lies)," the kind of arms-in-the-air anthem that many acts would end a show with, and then the accordion-powered "No Cars Go" with barely a pause.

Even the few more ruminative numbers that followed, like a pretty, pleading "Crown of Love," were rendered a full on dance party by song's end.

A good portion of Arcade Fire's 18-song set was culled from the band's latest disc, "The Suburbs," which recently won the Grammy for Album of the Year.

It's a record posited on the perceived inertia of middle-class living and the blandness of a prefab society, an album about searching for connections in an increasingly detached world and taking the time to experience the moment in an age of immediacy.

"Now our lives are changing fast, hope that something pure can last," frontman Win Butler sang during "We Used to Wait," a song that began with an insistent piano line that eventually catalyzed a roaring in a singalong.

That's the thing with this bunch: They sound triumphant even when giving voice to defeat, and though their songs are filled with uncertainty, none of this is present in the band's physical bearing.

At The Joint, they came at the crowd like a bunch of prison escapees on the run with the audience being the only thing standing in the way of their freedom.

They were a blur of kinetic energy, trading instruments with one another the way teen girls swap clothes.

It all escalated into a fever pitch that, like a boulder rolling down a mountain, kept building momentum even as it generated considerable force at the time.

By the end of their set during a combustible "Wake Up," just before the encore, Butler was whipping a tambourine into his guitar so hard, some of the strings frayed and snapped.

"Somethin' filled up my heart with nothin'," he sang at the outset of the song, which could be interpreted as a reflection on a loss of one's faith.

His words seemed a little ironic, however, considering that the sentiment that he was ostensibly speaking of was the very thing that seemed to be restored for so many of the fireworks-starved alt-rock fans on this night.

Contact reporter Jason Bracelin at jbracelin@ reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0476