It’s Been a Long Time Coming

By Rachel

You’ve heard it here before.  You’ve read it in the New York Times and Spin magazine and countless other publications.  Montreal is where it’s at and the Arcade Fire is THE Canadian band.  Why even bother to offer an adjective, there’s just too many too choose from.  The critically-and-David Bowie-acclaimed Arcade Fire is “Canada’s most intriguing rock band,” as declared by this week’s Time Magazine’s Canadian Edition, on newsstands now.
Laura Blue and Hugh Porter offer a peek into the story of how this virtually unknown group became the hottest indie band in North America.  These Montreal musicians are led by husband-and-wife songwriting duo Win Butler and Régine Chassagne, and Tim Kingsbury, Richard Parry, Sarah Neufeld and Win’s brother Will. 
Their unofficial first record was a self-titled EP released in 2002, but their official debut – the celebrated Funeral – was released in the fall of 2004 on Merge Records, and ended the year on a number of top ten lists including the New Yorker, Pitchfork Media, Rolling Stone, Eye Weekly, Filter Magazine, and ahem, Torontoist, to name but a few. 
If you’ve been lucky enough to see them live, then you’ll agree with Exclaim magazine when they say that the Arcade Fire have honed a shock-and-awe tactic in their live show that has sent scenesters scrambling for superlatives.  The good news is that the Arcade Fire are playing three upcoming shows in Toronto at the Danforth Music Hall, on April 26, 27 and 28.  The bad news is that it is long sold out.  Tickets went on sale about a month ago and in some cases, sold out within hours.  So unless you were one of the lucky ones, chances are you are going to miss out on an amazing show, unless you know a friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend…
The latest edition of Time Canada also includes an article on Canada’s music scene, highlighting a few notable acts including Metric, Stars (also featured this month’s Toronto Fashion, by Raising the Fawn’s John Crossingham), Death From Above 1979, the Organ, and the Dears.  But wait, it doesn’t stop there, if you buy now we’ll throw in The Insider’s Guide to Indie Rock, written by Toronto’s very own indie rock darling Brendan Canning of Broken Social Scene fame.