Win Tickets to See Arcade Fire
My Spilt Milk has a pair of tickets to give away to Tuesday night's show courtesy of Live Nation.
On Tuesday, September 26, Live Nation presents Arcade Fire at the UNO Lakefront Arena, and we have a pair of tickets to give away. Register here for a chance to win. The contest closes Monday at noon Central.
This week, Arcade Fire made news when it released a new single on Spotify—a sparer version of “Everything Now” and a cover of John Lennon’s “Mind Games.” The former likely reflects the song’s in-concert arrangement, while the latter renews Lennon’s anti-war stance, one that almost seems quaint after we’ve been in Afghanistan for 16 years.
The Spotify release seems curious since Arcade Fire’s Win Butler and Regine Chassagne were on stage with Jay Z, Kanye West, Rihanna, Jack White, Beyoncé and more to announce the launch of Tidal in 2015. Butler has since backed away from Tidal, regretting the optics of the star-studded roll-out and the premium price tag that limited Tidal’s place in the market. “None of the artists knew anything about the PR,” he said later that year. “It was a poorly managed launch, but conceptually the thing that we liked about Tidal was that it’s HD streaming quality.”
The move feels of a piece with Arcade Fire’s restless independence, even after releasing Everything Now on Columbia Records. The band has let its arena-sized indie rock grow to reflect members’ interest in dance music, and the marketing campaign for the new album involved acts of pop culture pranking. Whether they all worked is up for discussion (On our scorecard, Kendall Jenner/hip-hop legend T-shirts—yes; Stereogum parody—no), but they made clear that Arcade Fire was not constrained by moving to a major label. If anything, it looks like Columbia has made it possible for the band to be itself on an even bigger scale.
Arcade Fire’s live show remains its trump card. In Consequence of Sound, Lior Phillips and Heather Kaplan reviewed the band’s Lollapalooza set:
In a live show, cherry-picking the album’s best songs and placing them into the midst of the most revelatory of their whole career shows the heart at their core. Arcade Fire aren’t capable of putting on a live show without absolute passion and sincerity, and that glowed like a golden aura at their Lollapalooza-closing set. There’s an intoxicating density to their new songs, a depth of field that fits comfortably in with their catalog and stood shoulder-to-shoulder with just about every Arcade Fire favorite. Their live set now offers everything, now.
Tickets to Arcade Fire are on sale now. As a special deal, students can buy a pair of tickets for $40, not including the applicable fees.
