Following its appearance on the Season 39 opener of “Saturday Night Live,” hosted by Tina Fey, Arcade Fire kept the music going with “Here Comes The Night Time,” a trippy, 30-minute special on NBC that aired immediately after “SNL.”
The double shot was in service to promote “Reflektor,” the band”s new album out on Merge on Oct. 29. It will be the Montreal-based group”s first set since 2010″s “The Suburbs,” which won the Grammy for Album of the Year at the 2011 Grammy Awards.
In addition to current single/title track, “Reflektor,” and “Afterlife,” which the band performed in “SNL,” Arcade Fire debuted three new songs from the forthcoming album during the special.
UPDATED: Arcade Fire has tweeted a link to audio of the three new songs
A bizarre trailer featuring paper mache versions of the band members that surfaced Friday set the tone for the equally strange, theatrical special that felt like a cross between a hipster”s Halloween and New Year”s Eve party. It opened with Arcade Fire”s lead singer Win Butler, clad in a red and white suit with a black bandit mask painted across his eyes, leading a conga line, filled with costumed characters, including a bunny, from the “SNL” set to The Salsatheque a club in their hometown. The show opened with new song “Here Comes The Night Time,” which exploded from a English Beat-like bouncy to a rave-up with Butler joining the dancing, costumed crowd.
The club crowd line danced to new song, the new wave-y “We Exist,” as if they were re-enacting “The Time Warp” from “Rocky Horror Picture Show.”
James Franco, Aziz Ansari, Ben Stiller and Bono-the latter two with the big paper mache heads featured in the “Reflektor” video- and a Spanish-speaking Michael Cera, posing as an irritated, Arcade Fire-hating bartender in the club, all made cameo appearances. In a oddly unfunny sketch, Bill Hader and Zach Galifianakis posed as astronauts who beamed in with Butler wishing them a safe return because “we need another ‘Hangover” movie.”
The band then changed gears and clothes and the millieu for an ’80s vibe (intercut with the current club scene), with Rainn Wilson as their bearded, bandana-ed roadie named Carl and Jason Schwartzmann as a centaur for the chaotic “Normal Person.”
In addition to “Reflektor,” the band is also scoring Spike Jonze” new movie, “Her.”
We’ll post video of the special as soon as it’s available, but in the meantime, enjoy AF’s performance of “Reflektor” from “SNL.”