Last best show: Arcade Fire - 5/10/07 - Orpheum, Boston

Rock shows so rarely make me feel like I'm watching a “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.”

It’s probably because so few rock shows have someone with Arcade Fire frontman Win Bulter’s gravitas doing a damn convincing Captain Nemo-going-down-with-the-sub impersonation looming over a 10-piece band and playing a 12-foot-tall pipe organ bathed in a ghoulishly-dim red light.

Not every moment of the Arcade Fire’s sold-out show was as creepy as Bulter singing “I’m standing on a stage/Of fear and self-doubt/It’s a hollow play/But they'll clap anyway” and playing his gargantuan pipe organ. But they were all nearly as cool and compelling.

The band mounted a stage show more intricate than anything I’ve seen in months – if not years. Slender rods spread around the stage pulsed red, an IMAX-sized backdrop broadcast abstract film clips, and five circular video screens above the band on poles flashed images of the band through fish-eyed lenses or neon bibles with fluttering pages or choreographed snow and static. And everything was suffused in a crimson glow.

Reinforcing the chaos, the Arcade Fire looked (and kind of acted) like mob of gothic bookstore employees and cabaret cocktail waitresses who got blitzed on absinth and raided a Prague polka music shop. Traditional rock instruments mixed with French horns, violins, accordions, glockenspiels and many more to oddly rock-out on “Black Mirror,” “No Cars Go,” single “Keep the Car Running” and the especially sweaty and undulating “Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels).”

While the band did manage to rein in the pandemonium for a few songs – the restrained “Ocean of Noise” and the moody encore lullaby “Neon Bible” – more often they were totally unhinged swapping instruments, shouting wordlessly at us (us shouted back) and banging on random drums and cymbals while writhing on the stage floor or jumping into the crowd.

And it was great to see. So few arty bands are this rowdy or visceral or, well, good when playing live.