Pitchfork

There's a lot of romance surrounding Barack Obama's presidential campaign. Imagine, for a moment, that New Mexico governor Bill Richardson was the candidate lodged in a late winter dogfight with Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination. Would Albuquerque natives the Shins be playing rallies prior to the March 4 primary in Ohio? My guess is no.

With the polls indicating a shrinking Clinton lead, most of the Arcade Fire made the 14-hour trek from Montreal to Ohio to drum up support for Obama, playing in Nelsonville on Sunday, March 2, and performing two free shows last night, March 3, at the Beachland Ballroom in Cleveland.

Braving long lines, rain, and a rapidly descending temperature, the throngs of Obama supporters/Arcade Fire fans packed the one-time Croatian dance hall in the slowly-but-surely gentrifying Waterloo neighborhood. There was a surprisingly stark contrast between the two sets: the early show was an almost somber affair, while the second set was a raucous revival of sorts.

The band kicked off the early show with a subdued cover of David Bowie's "Heroes". Win Butler quipped that the last time they played on the Beachland stage there were one hundred people in attendance (he was understating that a bit), and that the increased attendance "means Barack Obama should be the president." He offered up "Intervention" as a cry for help after the 2004 election, adding a scorching run through of John Lennon's "Gimme Some Truth" as the answer to that cry. The short set wound down with what seemed to be a perfunctory "Wake Up" and a somewhat stale arrangement of Sam Cooke's "A Change Is Gonna Come".

The late set was an almost entirely different event. Will Butler proved to be a far more adept political speaker than his brother, firing the crowd up with the assertion that "if Barack Obama doesn't become president, this whole movement will not mean anything...history doesn't remember the candidate that didn't win."

Opening this set with "Intervention", the band was clearly operating on a more vital level than a couple of hours earlier. This was especially evident in the increased urgency added to a burning "Antichrist Television Blues" and a more energetic, almost punked-up repeat of "Gimme Some Truth".

After a short speech from Obama spokesman Kevin Griffis (who was personally responsible for the Ohio rallies, as his series of emails with Win Butler led to the hastily-arranged shows), the band revisited "A Change Is Gonna Come" (again without the undesired effect). The second set's infectious energy was recaptured with a searing "Neighborhood #3 (Power Out)", with Win delivering the second half of the song from the floor among the packed crowd. The crowd responded accordingly, and the combination of dancing and shoving was nearly the polar opposite from the stoic nature of the earlier group of attendees.

This set's take on "Wake Up," which closed the night, found the band in their typical post-show impromptu balcony formation, creating the sort of crowd participation befitting a rally for participatory democracy.

There is plenty to make voters cynical in our country, and a skeptical reaction to a band of native and transplanted Canadians holding a political rally for an American presidential candidate is fairly predictable. But for a state with such a late primary (traditionally, the early March voting in Ohio has offered little aside from the opportunity for voters to cast a petulant vote of displeasure with the prohibitive candidate), the closeness of the Democratic race was a rare chance to attract this sort of attention before the general election. The decidedly young crowd reveled in the occasion, swept up in equal measure by the band and the romance of Obama's campaign. A bleak and rainy day awaits voters on Election Day, but the fighting spirit that the Arcade Fire brought with them to northeast Ohio proved that the possibility for less-cynical politics has a willing audience in Cleveland.