BRIAN BOYDand TONY CLAYTON-LEAreview this weeks music DVDs

ARCADE FIRE

Miroir Noir Mercury★★★★

While touring the Neon Bible album, Arcade Fire took along film-makers Vincent Morisset and Vincent Moon to record a very atypical visual document.  You get the band performing in a range of different venues – as well as cars and lifts – but what really lifts is the footage here of some interesting inter-band debates, as well as a hilarious succession of telephone messages (left on a free-phone number) where ardent fans and even more ardent detractors voice their opinion of the band. Sample message from a fan:  “We were thinking about what you guys were saying and we’ve been touched by the hope and the truth and . . . oh shit, my foot’s on fire. I gotta go.” It’s all shot in a very shaky, lo-fi way, which adds to the strangeness of the venture. Funny, intense and idiosyncratic , this is very much a mini-art project from one of the most interesting bands around, and is destined to become a minor classic.

BRIAN BOYD

WILCO

Ashes of American Flags Nonesuch★★★★

Most tour movies tend to be ordinary affairs – life on the road amid the kind of antics you get up to when you’re suffering from a mixture of white-line fever, extreme boredom and the adrenalin rush of performing. Wilco (below), however, are not your average, ordinary band. In US terms, they are the equivalent of Radiohead; once creators of classic, well- turned-out Americana/alt country, Wilco slowly evolved into a band that has been twisting and reshaping their nominal areas of expertise into something altogether more fractured and intriguing. Filmed by Christoph Green and Brendan Canty, this exceptionally fine, naturalistic film captures the band (through its primary focus on twitchy frontman Jeff Tweedy) as they perform at various venues from Nashville and New Orleans to Washington DC and Tulsa, and as they look out of the tour-bus window, passing remnants of a changing America, and chatting about the next gig ahead of them. Music DVD of the year? A contender, for sure.

TONY CLAYTON-LEA