Arcade Fire is a Canadian indie rock band, consisting of husband and wife Win Bulter and Regine Chassagne, alongside Richard Reed Parry, Tim Kingsbury and Jeremy Gara. The band’s current touring line-up also includes former core member Sarah Neufeld and multi-instrumentalists Paul Beaubrun, Dan Boeckner and Eric Heigle. Each of the band’s studio albums features contributions from composer and violinist Owen Pallett.
Halfway through 2001, the band consisted of Butler, Chassagne, Deu, multi-instrumentalist Tim Kile, bassist Myles Broscoe, guitarist/drummer Dane Mills and multi-instrumentalist Brendan Reed, who lived with Butler and Chassagne in Montreal’s Mile End neighbourhood at the time and was a collaborator with them on song-writing and arrangement (2001–2003).
Well before Arcade Fire won a Grammy Award for Album of the Year in 2011, the group (well, most of the group) recorded a rough-around-the-edges Christmas EP live at a party in 2001. The tracks on the EP are primarily Christmas standards like “The Christmas Song,” “O Holy Night,” and “Jingle Bell Rock,” while the last track, “A Very Arcade Xmas” is more or less a jam session.
Rumour has it that the group then hand-distributed the EP to friends as a DIY Christmas gift and it eventually made its way to the web where it has been passed around by Arcade Fire catalogue completists and fervent fans. Though the rollicking, possibly drunken, performance is not commercially available, it’s well worth tracking down on the Internet.
