A couple of months ago I went to see Harlem Shakes, a New York City band of increasing renown. I noticed immediately that they’re young—perhaps a couple years removed from prep-school hipsterdom—and wildly energetic as they play nerdy, acrobatic songs with abandoned hooks and double and triple-jointed melodies. There are five or six of them up there on stage together. The keyboard player repeating a few bars with one hand as the other is used to slap himself in the chest with a tambourine. A saxophonist is almost hidden behind the amps on the other side of the stage—sometimes not doing anything at all, sometimes blowing a few muted notes into his microphone, and sometimes leaning in and joining everyone else as they sing “Oh-oh” in counterpoint to the lead singer. A significant part of their elbows-and-knees kinetics can be attributed to the fact that there are probably too many people in the band, or at least more than is strictly necessary.

Another part of this, of course, can be attributed to the band’s youth: when you’re in high school and word gets out that you’re starting a band, it’s hard to tell your friends that they can’t be a part of it. But it’s not as if this kind of enthusiasm is the exclusive provenance of gee-whiz youth. Disparate spheres of the indie rock strata have recently turned to collectivity. Take for instance Broken Social Scene’s Toronto, a gnarled family tree of big bands and small, incestuous side projects; when Broken Social Scene or Stars or any of their offshoots play a show, it’s a sprawling affair, with compatriots dropping in onstage for a couple of songs, liberal instrument swapping, and slowly building songs whose majesty comes from many instruments—spare parts, like trombones and triangles—layered atop each other. Or take another social scene; the accurately named Animal Collective and their menagerie of freak folk affiliates. Or take the kitchen sink, bells-and-whistles pop of Architecture in Helsinki (six members averaging perhaps a half-dozen instruments each). Or I’m From Barcelona (29 members with a recent album titled Let Me Introduce My Friends). Or take Tim DeLaughter’s Polyphonic Spree, a band often compared to a cult, both for their unity of purpose (sartorially and otherwise) and boggling inclusiveness. Anyone who wants to join, it appears, can. Just ask and you’ll be issued a robe and tambourine and can then get up on stage to help sing their leader’s compositions.

Let’s return to high school for a minute: why do teenagers form bands, anyway? Anyone who’s ever learned to play guitar can tell you what the first song they learned to play was; when it comes time to start playing one’s own songs, it’s through shared taste in music that bandmates are found, assessed and bonded with.

What all the bands I’ve mentioned have in common is the almost utopian spirit of their shared enterprise. And their underlying goal is, essentially, to act in support. They seem less concerned with musicianship or personal artistry than with augmenting the core of the song—each performance is an act of devotion. It’s not just with the traditional flourishes, string and horn sections either. This particular strain of music is characterized by whistling, by unruly backup singers, and by time kept diligently (though occasionally messily) with auxiliary percussion—hand claps and shakers and timpanis and rattles. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that auxiliary percussion and backup vocals are the onstage equivalent to the two things anybody in the audience can do: clap in time and sing along. Or, if you prefer: clap your hands, say yeah. The experience these bands project, through their original material, is the sense of catharsis that comes from losing oneself in someone else’s songs.

It’s worth taking a minute here to state the obvious: this trend is anything but sui generis. Gospel, just for instance, has long been tapping into this vein of spiritual community, you might say, taking special notice of the archetypal chorus made up of neighbors shaking homemade tambourines. To place the issue in a singularly broad context, yes, music has always been about the desire for emotional transportation and elevation. “I believe that through art all men are saved,” said Wagner, unsurprisingly. But it is interesting that indie rock, a genre so frequently cited for its self-awareness and direct address of its influences, has turned to the instruments of self-effacement to enable its salvation. All these glockenspiels and backing falsettos make their own wall of sound, but rather than shadowy technicians and obsessive craftsmen, these bricks are all visible, unabashed by the occasional misstep as they work together on their grown-up symphonies to god.

No indie band in recent memory, of course, has come nearer to religious ecstasy than the Arcade Fire, a band led by a married couple, and comprised of their relatives and friends. Funeral, an album inspired by the band’s grief over the death of loved ones (a transcendental topic however you slice it), is perhaps the most fiercely loved record of this young century.

During the time following Funeral’s release I had a couple of friends who fell hard for the Arcade Fire. Over the course of the next year or two, they went to a half-dozen shows and sent out group emails to our circle of friends every time new tour dates took the band through New York asking how many tickets they should buy—assuming they got through Ticketmaster fast enough when the tickets went on sale. When they were shut out of shows, they’d listen to the NPR simulcasts.

I, and a number of my friends, finally saw the Arcade Fire for the first time in September of 2005 as part of a capacity crowd at Central Park Summerstage. From what I gathered, it was a typical Arcade Fire show, which means it appeared to be a bankrupting expenditure of emotional capital for everyone on stage, and for a significant percentage of spectators. Win and Regine Butler appeared near tears by the end of practically every song; their bandmates reached a fever pitch with every one of the band’s crescendos. (Which came first: the Arcade Fire’s emotional demonstrativeness, or their preferred composition style, favoring fraught climbs to mountainous peaks?) Off to the side of the stage three of the members donned crash helmets for a significant portion of the set and yelped as they whapped drumsticks on each others’ heads in time to the songs—treating their own bodies as auxiliary percussion instruments.

But it was during the encore that the band members appeared the most fulfilled. There had been rumors of an appearance by Arcade Fire superfan, David Bowie, and indeed, after the band returned to stage for the encore, the Thin White Duke strolled out in a linen jacket and what could only be described as a bipperty-bopperty boater hat. All together, they played “Queen Bitch”, Bowie singing lead and the Arcade Fire, beaming, backing him up. No self-flagellations with tambourines or primal backup screams—just their joy at being onstage with a hero and playing along as he sang one of their favorite songs. A joy different perhaps only in degree from the joy of their audience.

Those two friends of mine are now in a band, a seven-piece unit that sounds not unlike Zach Condon’s gypsy rock ensemble Beirut. There’s a three-piece string section and a drummer who occasionally moves out from behind his kit. My friends and the band’s nominal leader alternate between electric and acoustic guitar, bass, accordion and any number of percussion instruments. In one song, one of my friends juggles a shaker, claves, sleigh bells and a cymbal roll. My favorite song of theirs is one without any words: they and the frontman stand abreast onstage, facing the audience and harmonizing into their respective microphones in a rising and falling series of “Ah-AH-Ah’s—three backup singers to a lead that doesn’t exist. The rest of us sit, and watch, and sing along.

Watch: “Rebellion” [at youtube.com]

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