Larry Cooper40 said:exactly...
At Lollapalooza in Slovakia, everyone gets 60 minutes, from the local openers to the headliners. So a 90-minute festival set is actually pretty standard...
Last year in Boston, when they headlined, Arcade Fire played for 90 minutes including an encore (Wake Up)... so the fact that they walked off and then came back yesterday doesn't really mess with their usual set length at all...
Pretty much. All their festival sets follow this pattern. The only "encore" that could have happened is if they stepped off stage two songs early just to come right back and play the exact same thing they were going to play anyway.
Non-festival shows, from what I can tell, are usually just maybe two songs longer than this.
Larry Cooper40 said:The biggest issue with yesterday's set was the unbalanced mix. You couldn't hear the high notes or get a decent balance across the instruments, which totally ruined the quieter tracks like Intervention and The Suburbs... The volume (or lack thereof) was consistent during their Boston show (I mention it because that was the first time and only other time I've seen them until yesterday), which probably works fine in acoustic venues, but it just fails in an open field...
For me, it was hardest during Suburban War; I felt like I was trying to decipher the music through nothing but the massive roar and screaming of the crowd. Same goes for Regina, Haiti, and Sprawl II—you could barely hear them.