Arcade Fire is ahead of the game

A few hours before its show at Spaceland this week, the band Arcade Fire pulled into the Silver Lake club’s parking lot in a white van with a trailer in tow. As about 10 people unfolded from the cramped vehicle, a dozen or so others who had been milling around in hopes of scoring tickets for the sold-out show mixed in with them around the back of the trailer.

Band member Richard Parry opened the trailer and started handing out pieces of musical equipment almost randomly, as if he wasn’t sure himself who was part of the band and who was a fan.

Even one of the band’s cherished plastic cows that would later grace the stage was handed to a young woman.

“This is great,” she said. “Even if it doesn’t get me into the show, at least I got to do this.”

Parry -- a tall, bespectacled redhead -- was pleasantly amused by the volunteer roadie crew.

“Never had that many people do that before,” he said a few minutes later. “It was really cool -- people wanting to come to the show and just pitching in to help.”

Parry and his six bandmates shouldn’t be surprised when they return to L.A. for shows Jan. 15 and Jan. 16 at the Troubadour if the crowd of helpers is much bigger. The group has become a grass-roots phenom since the September release of its debut album, “Funeral,” with acclaim building as fast among record-business insiders as with the kinds of fans who lined up to help with the gear. And the exhilarating performance that followed showed that it is well-deserved.

Arcade Fire’s California debut stood with Franz Ferdinand’s first local show last March at the Troubadour as among the most notable rock arrivals of the year, sharing a spirit of independence and romantic spark that, with such other relative newcomers as Damien Rice, Bright Eyes and the Shins, is returning to prominence in at least part of the rock world.

Playing more than a dozen instruments among them Tuesday, the members of Arcade Fire called to mind the spirit of such innovators as Talking Heads, the Pixies and the Sugarcubes -- not so much by sounding like them as by sounding as distinctive now as those bands did when they emerged.

Snaky accordion and violin lines tangled with choppy electric guitars and bubbly percussion, while singer Win Butler led what often turned into a chorus of joyful voices, with other members joining in with seeming spontaneity. And the counterpoint to Butler’s dapper presence (a la a young Bryan Ferry), accordionist-singer Regine Chassagne’s Weimar art-cabaret figure and Parry’s earnest goofiness (Butler noted his resemblance to uber-geek film character Napoleon Dynamite) provided the visual equivalent of the musical jumble.

That hardly sounds like a description of a band whose songs are largely rooted in death. But “Funeral” indeed grew out of the passing of several of the band members’ relatives and friends over the last couple of years. The fact that they have found so much life to celebrate in the midst of this is part of the magic of Arcade Fire.

On the album it’s a whole concept, from the Edward Gorey-esque Victoriana artwork and funeral program insert to the lyrical themes of home and family. The album and the concert were built around a four-song cycle, titled “Neighborhood,” that is all about finding light in darkness and hope in sadness and ultimately about finding a sense of belonging. Appropriately, one of the encore songs Tuesday was a version of Talking Heads’ “This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody),” a sweet meditation on those very things.

The band does in fact have family roots, with Butler’s brother, William, a co-founder (though he was absent from this tour), and Butler and Chassagne being married. (A cool trivia note: the Butlers’ musical lineage includes grandparents Luise King of the King Sisters and bandleader-steel guitarist Alvino Rey.) On stage the sense of extended family enlivened the presence and fueled an embracing attitude that extended into the audience -- evidenced by the parking lot scene.

On the other hand, if the band wants to, it could have a professional crew replace the fan-roadies soon. There were certainly a lot of major record company executives at the show who would love to give them a chance.

“Funeral” was released by small North Carolina label Merge Records and the word is the group isn’t interested in a major-label deal.

“It’s not so black and white,” Parry said before the show. “What’s certain is that we’re going to put out another album on Merge, because we love them. The ethics and working nature of Merge and a lot of the indies is more impressive to us than the majors.”