Arcade Fire helped kick off the 39th season of Saturday Night Live last night with host Tina Fey and a ton of cameos that followed in their thirty minute special which aired directly after the episode. Not only was it their first performance in support of Reflektor outside of their secret shows in Montreal, but Win Butler pretended to be Robert De Niro and Tina Fey called him “some kind of a hipster Paul Bunyan? Could be a Civil War reenactor, or like a Serbian basketball player,” in the sketch “Arcade Fire Or New Featured Player.”
At the end of the show they performed “Reflektor” and “Afterlife” joined by Owen Pallett, Colin Stetson, and Michael Lewis with Régine trapped in a mirrored box, and as if that wasn’t enough, they proceeded to play another 30 minutes in an NBC special directly following the show.
The set featured a seemingly endless list of cameos including Michael Cera as the Spanish speaking bartender, Bill Hader and Zach Galifianakis being moody with the band from the moon, Rainn Wilson as a roadie, Bono, Ben Stiller, James Franco, Aziz Ansari, Eric Wareheim, and Aaron Paul (who was not featured, but was in attendance). They debuted “Here Comes the Night Time,” “We Exist,” and “Normal People” complete with choreographed audience dancers all dressed in crazy costumes in some kind of cool underground club looking place.
Proper videos have yet to surface online yet, but we’ll update this page just as soon as they do. Watch Aaron Paul’s 20 second clip below now and stay tuned.
“Afterlife”:
“Reflektor”:
