Arcade Fire put Coachella’s first weekend to bed with a stunning set that featured surprise guests and a few digs at the festival from frontman Win Butler.
Beginning with the title cut of their most recent album Reflektor, the Canadian outfit almost immediately jumped back to their first LP, performing the Funeral standouts “Neighborhood #3 (Power Out)” and “Rebellion (Lies).” From there, they bounced around through all their albums, with Butler giving props to “all the bands playing instruments this weekend” and criticizing the Coachella VIP areas. “There’s a lot of kind like fake VIP room bullshit happening at this festival, and I just wanted to say that sometimes people dream about getting into places like that, and it super sucks in there so don’t worry about it,” he said.
The first big surprise came when Debbie Harry appeared onstage to help the band cover Blondie’s 1978 hit “Heart of Glass,” which they recently performed sans Harry in Houston. She then stuck around to sing the Suburbs hit “Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains).” After a few more songs, Arcade Fire invited New Orleans’ Preservation Hall Jazz Band to the stage to perform a rousing take on “Wake Up” that ended with most of the musicians in the crowd before they walked off to a Dixieland-style outro. Watch the whole thing above.
Arcade Fire’s Coachella setlist:
1. “Reflektor”
2. “Flashbulb Eyes”
3. “Neighborhood #3 (Power Out)”
4. “Rebellion (Lies)”
5. “Joan of Arc”
6. “The Suburbs”
7. “Ready to Start”
8. “Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)”
9. “No Cars Go”
10. “Keep the Car Running”
11. “Afterlife” (with “My Body Is a Cage” intro and New Order’s “Temptation” snippet)
12. “It’s Never Over (Oh Orpheus)”
13. “Heart of Glass” (Blondie cover, with Debbie Harry)
14. “Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)” (with Debbie Harry)
15. “Normal Person”
16. “Here Comes the Night Time”
17. “Wake Up” (with Preservation Hall Jazz Band, and band walking through crowd for acoustic outro)
