Arcade Fire, Ryman Auditorium, Nashville, TN - 8/9/2010

On the heels of playing 2 straight (almost or possibly completely sold out?) shows at Madison Square Garden (capacity: 18,200), the Arcade Fire pulled into Nashville to play the legendary Ryman (capacity: 2,362). I was kind of excited, to say the least. I'd also been digging on the latest release, The Suburbs, in a big way.

Our posse met up for pre-show drinks at 12 South Taproom and then headed over to the venue. I unloaded my extra ticket (at face value, thank you very much) and headed in. We had main floor, off-to-the-side seats, which I was nervous about as you don't really want to be way under the balcony at this venue, but they were turned out pretty great (see photo to the left).

The show was pretty epic, and this is a band who don't have many duds in their catalog. (I still love Neon Bible, no matter what the consensus is.) The new tunes, esp. the "big" ones like "Sprawl II" and "We Used To Wait," were sweeping, and the classics from Funeral were as epic as ever. This was probably my last chance to see them at a small-ish venue, and I'm glad I made it ...

(???'s = not quite sure but pretty sure)

Ready to Start
Laika
No Cars Go
Haiti
Half Light II - No Celebration (???)
The Suburbs
Deep Blue (???)
Intervention
Crown of Love
Tunnels
Suburban War (???)
We Used to Wait
Power Out
Rebellion (Lies)

Keep the Car Running
Sprawl II
Wake Up