Bill Graham Civic Auditorium

Hailing from Montreal, Canada, Arcade Fire are a six piece band that have won two BRITs, two Grammys, and have released three records over the last ten years.

Their breakthrough album Funeral (Rough Trade, 2004) was nominated for a Grammy for Alternative Album of The Year and as the decade closed Funeral was chosen by Rolling Stone as the #1 album of the ‘00s. The album also featured in numerous ‘Best of the Decade’ polls around the world including NME, Q, Pitchfork, The Guardian and Mojo. Arcade Fire’s platinum-selling sophomore album Neon Bible (Sonovox, 2007) debuted at #2 in the UK and USA. Recorded in Québec, New York, Budapest and London, it was released to critical acclaim with the NME calling them ‘‘…the first truly 21st century band”. Q named Neon Bible album of the year in 2007, and it was nominated for Best Alternative Music Album at the Grammys. 2010’s The Suburbs (Sonovox) debuted at #1 in seven countries including UK, the United States and Canada and the album has since gone double platinum in Canada; platinum in the UK and Ireland; as well as gold in France, Belgium, Denmark, Portugal, Australia and the US.

Following the album release, the band performed two sold out shows at New York’s Madison Square Garden, producing a live stream on You Tube directed by Terry Gilliam, which received over 1.8 million views worldwide. The Wilderness Downtown, an online video for We Used To Wait using groundbreaking HTML 5 technology, has received over 77 million views worldwide to date. A short film, Scenes from the Suburbs, directed by Spike Jonze and co-written by Jonze, Will Butler and Win Butler, accompanied a new edition of The Suburbs released in June 2011. Arcade Fire were named Band of the Year on the cover of Q Magazine in 2010, and that year performed on Saturday Night Live, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and Later… with Jools Holland.

In February 2011 Arcade Fire won Album of The Year at the Grammy Awards for The Suburbs, before going on to win Best International Group and Best International Album at the 2011 BRIT Awards. 2012 also saw The Suburbs pick up an additional Grammy for Best Recording Package. Arcade Fire have toured extensively worldwide, including Europe, America and Australasia. Renowned as being one of the best live acts around, the Daily Telegraph described Arcade Fire as “the greatest live band in the world, and everybody who sees them knows it.” . Rolling Stone Magazine recently ranked the band at #4 in their Best Live Acts Now list. 2

012 saw the Arcade Fire release a limited edition vinyl release of Sprawl II/Ready to Start remixes for Record Store Day, as well as recording two new songs Abraham’s Daughter and Horn of Plenty for the soundtrack of hugely success epic The Hunger Games. The band also completed the score for Spike Jonze’s film Her (2013), which received an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Score. Arcade Fire’s highly anticipated fourth album Reflektor was released on 28th October on Sonovox, and went on to top the iTunes chart in 40 countries, as well as hitting #1 in the Official Album Charts in the UK, Canada, Ireland, Belgium, Portugal and the USA. Produced by Arcade Fire, James Murphy and Markus Dravs, the album was recorded in Jamaica, Montreal and New York. Title track ‘Reflektor’ was released on the 9 / 9 at 9:00pm, featuring guest vocals from David Bowie and an accompanying video by long time collaborator Anton Corbijn. A second interactive video for ‘Reflektor’, created for Google Chrome and written and directed by Vincent Morisset, was shot in Haiti. The band’s 2013 live tour as The Reflektors saw them play intimate shows in New York, Miami, LA, Glasgow and London, ahead of an extensive tour which took in headline slots at Glastonbury Festival and Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival in 2014.

2014 saw Reflektor win Album of the Year and Alternative Album of the Year at the Juno Awards, as well as shortlisted for the 2014 Polaris Music Prize. And a documentary film called The Reflektor Tapes, directd by Kahlil Joseph, about the making of the album, was selected to be shown at the 2015 Toronto Film Festival. Arcade Fire will play a number of festival dates across Europe and North America this summer including Primavera Sound, Isle of Wight Festival, Rock Werchter, Roskilde and Castlefield Bowl in Manchester. Arcade Fire are William Butler, Win Butler, Régine Chassagne, Jeremy Gara, Tim Kingsbury and Richard Reed Parry.