Will Butler and special guests - by Conor Mills

OK, I'm going to start by admitting a mistake - this gig was definitely not Arcade Fire. I had originally thought so, having bought the ticket from their website. Then I had heard that the venue would have suited a solo act - this led to the assumption that the lead singer Win Butler would make an appearance with another band.  Obviously I was still uber excited about going – there is something about the range of emotions that he sings at that just draws you in and hooks you on their music. The voice as the headline act? Wouldn't say no to that! But alas... Win's brother Will was the headline act (an easy mistake right?!) who is a backing instrumentalist in Arcade Fire. With this backdrop of increasingly negative realizations I really wasn't sure what I was to expect from this gig.

While they were setting up on stage you got the feeling they were going for simplicity - plainly dressed in jeans with black t-shirts with different names spread across them. I'm almost certain the guy with the 'Will' t-shirt was Will Butler and I'm reliably informed the other band members were Julie, Sara and Miles who I've never heard of before. Ready to go, they have less gear on the small stage than you could fit in a small car. The drummer Miles doesn't even have a chair. It was as if they were intentionally going back for that home-made garage-band kind of gig. They definitely brought that feel to it, but I'm afraid their sound gave them away. They killed it, simply.

I had the unfortunate condition of being slightly deaf in one ear in the week leading up to the gig, which is never something you want going to any gig. If I'm being honest, I don't think three ears would have been enough to take in the range of sounds these guys are throwing out. They had everything – funky riffs, building crescendos, melodic harmonies, bass lines (very important!) and lots and lots of energy. One song even had a drum solo which is something you don’t often see. You could tell they were just enjoying themselves up on stage and the audience loved it. 

Will Butler came across as a very funny down to earth person – early on he snapped a guitar string and instead of carrying on impromptu he stops playing and asked if anyone in the crowd could fix it up for him. While some chap goes backstage with the guitar to restring it he starts chatting and joking to the audience about rent prices and council tax in London of all things…It certainly got the audience involved early on and if there were many people like myself who didn't know their music beforehand, we were happy enough to bounce around to great sounding music regardless of what it was after that.

I could have imagined that this small band set up as they were could have been what Arcade Fire were like when they were just starting off. You could definitely get the vibe of Arcade Fire music off the songs they played which would have blended in seamlessly to any Arcade Fire playlist. In that sense, I thoroughly enjoyed the gig as I had the chance to witness all of these new songs for the first time, live. A great experience and one that I would do again!

Here are a few of Will Butler’s songs which stood out on the night, which in my opinion they were even better live: 

'Son of God'

'Anna'

'Something's coming'