Nobody’s bitter about this Murphy
Over the years there have been some notable rock stars who don’t really look like rock stars at all. Charlie Watts springs to mind. James Dean Bradfield of the Manics looks like an electrician, and need we even mention Jarvis Cocker’s librarian chic look? To this list can be added one James Murphy, frontman, songwriter and all round genius behind LCD Soundsystem. Portly, cuddly with a sensible haircut, you could imagine him serving in your local chippy or bartering at the local market fruit stall. Tonight though he brings his rock star credentials to Leeds as his band begin the push to promote their final album ‘This is happening’
Yes that’s correct, their final album. Murphy has repeatedly stated that he is tired of the whole album, tour, album, tour roller coaster and plans to retire the band in order to do ‘Other things’. So with the feeling that these few gigs could be amongst the band’s last UK appearances, apart from festival shows, its a sold out venue which awaits the band tonight. There is a touch of the arcade fire about the number of personnel that come out onto the excellent Academy stage, percussion, keys, and backing singers are all in evidence alongside the usual bass, drums and guitar. Any thoughts that the show will be concentrating on new stuff are banished straight away as they go into opener from Sound of Silver, ‘Get Innocuous’ is a rumbling beast of a dance tune, as good an album opener as there is, and as such makes a great start to the show. Perhaps surprisingly they follow this with Silver standout track ‘Us v Them’ and then signature song ‘Daft Punk is playing in my House’. Barely 20 minutes in and their biggest and best tracks all gone?
Or so we thought. The first surprise of the night is a run through early track ‘Yr city’s a sucker’ making full use of the bells in the percussion section. Then some new stuff, ‘Pow Pow’ a lengthy up tempo dance anthem which could prove to be one of the best things they have ever done, and ‘Drunk Girls’ the new album’s ‘North American Scum’ punky type track (surprisingly they don’t play ‘Scum’ tonight). By contrast, ‘I can Change’ is much more mellow and as such doesn’t really work in the live arena, though its probably more suited to the album. Still it gives the audience a break, who it has to be said are a bit stand offish tonight, and there were numerous scenester types in the crowd, more bothered about how their hair looked than watching the band. Still that’s Leeds for you. Between the new stuff they roll out last album big hit single ‘All my Friends’ and this actually gets all the audience going with its piano led hook being made for a groove along.
Word on the street was that this was going to be a pretty long set so when they left the stage after just 70 minutes, it looked like the street for once would be wrong. However the encores saw the band just getting warmed up. A superb rendition of my favourite last album tune, the eclectic (even by their standards) ‘Someone Great’ led into the highlight of the night. Debut single ‘Losing my Edge’ is performed in its entire 10 minutes of glory, its tale of geeky music fans obsession enabling Murphy to really get carried away with the spoken word bits, at times emulating one one his chief heroes, David Byrne of Talking Heads. In fact it is the Heads more than anything else who spring to mind when trying to pin LCD down to musical styles in so much as they have no hard and fast musical templates and do a lot of their stuff ‘Off the cuff’. Does that make sense? Good. Another new track is aired which I will need to hear a bit more to form an opinion, followed by set closer the fabulous balladry of ‘New York I love you but you are bringing me Down’, its quiet reflective lyric which gives way to the rest of the band playing an extended waltz ending the gig on a mellow, almost soothing note, a kind of comedown after the highs of the previous 1 and three quarter hours.
With the band seemingly booked into every festival possible this summer plus the chance to become more familiar with what is looking like another excellent album, LCD Soundsystem look set to be the name on everyones lips this year. Murphy seems set to go out on a high with this band. Now his next move could be the really intriguing one. Maybe he will end up on that market fruit stall.
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