Fire in a Crowded Church

The Montreal band Arcade Fire kicked off a five-night run of sold-out concerts at Judson Memorial Church on Tuesday night, and not everyone in the audience was comfortable with the setting.

"Why church?" a man near the front yelled out between songs. Win Butler, who leads the band with his wife, Régine Chassagne, seemed bemused, responding, "Who asks questions like that?" "New Yorkers!" the man shouted back. By the end of the band's radiant set an hour and a half later, no one seemed to mind being in church.

A large neon book glowed above the stage, looking quite at home, as though it were a permanent installation in the church, which has been a progressive bastion of worship in the West Village since 1890. Instead, it is the logo for the band's second full-length album, "Neon Bible," which will be released March 6. The set consisted mostly of songs from that album; the first single, "Black Mirror," was third on the set list. The crowd didn't know the words yet, but any worshipper needs time to learn a new liturgy, and those gathered at Judson Church listened with rapt attention.

The performances at Judson were billed as "warm-up shows" for a European and North American tour that will begin in Dublin on the eve of the album's release. The tour includes three performances in New York in May.

It didn't sound like a warm-up, however. Ten performers crowded the stage — seven principal band members and three touring musicians — and they were a remarkably cohesive unit. Mr. Butler and Ms. Chassagne share singing duties, and almost everyone plays more than one instrument. Sometimes there were two French horns going at once. During "Black Mirror," one performer played a clarinet while a saxophone hung around his neck. During the performance of the new album's title track, a piece of paper was ripped up in front of a microphone on the downbeats to provide an inimitable rhythmic accompaniment.

Ms. Chassagne's voice is sweet, but its occasional thinness was not flattered by the new song "Black Wave/Bad Vibrations." The beat seemed artificially slow during the middle of the song, and the ends of phrases slid downward into, well, bad vibrations. But mostly the sounds were clear and strong, and featured the epic effusiveness that is the band's specialty.

Arcade Fire, which won a rapturous following from critics and fans (including such notable ones as David Bowie and David Byrne) with its debut album, 2004's "Funeral," also excels at controlled cacophony, and especially at crescendo. The songs "Wake Up" and "Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)" from the debut album showcase that kind of layering — it's a sound that having a 10-piece band makes possible but also makes technically tricky. Arcade Fire pulled it off every time on Tuesday, especially in the new songs "Intervention" and "Antichrist Television Blues."

During "Windowsill," the first encore song, the lyric "I don't want to live in America" drew cheers. (You don't have to, Mr. Butler, you're Canadian.)

Of the new material, "My Body Is a Cage" stood out from that cacophony. Mr. Butler began by intoning, "My body is a cage that keeps me from dancin' with the one I love." It had the feel, appropriately, of a spiritual. "But my mind holds the key," he continued, and it became something else. By the time the band joined in, the crowd was swelling with something almost equal to the best kind of joy that can be found on Sunday mornings.