James Murphy lets the grown-ups get down
LCD Soundsystem At the Air Canada Centre on Sunday, Dec. 3.
LCD Soundsystem’s is a narrative that might once have served as sardonic meta-fodder for an early LCD Soundsystem song.
The very epitome of hipster-approved, early-2000s Brooklyn-underground cool, James Murphy’s propulsive dance-rock outfit declared it was breaking up forever in April of 2011, only to return as a bigticket festival headliner in the summer of 2016 playing — to crowds far larger than those it had ever enjoyed during its original existence — at events such as Coachella, Lollapalooza, Bonnaroo and Southern Ontario’s own WayHome. Now, hitting the road behind the recently released American Dream — its first new album in seven years and also its first No.1hit in Canada and the States — LCD Soundsystem is a bona fide arena act, turning up at the Air Canada Centre in Toronto on Sunday night, seven years after it bid farewell to the city with a gig at the considerably cozier, 2,000-capacity Kool Haus on the tour for 2010’s This is Happening.
Other than the size of the rooms, fortunately, not much else has changed. Apart from an enormous disco ball dangling over the band and its gear that first lit up to a whoop of delight from the crowd three-quarters of the way through opener “Oh Baby,” there was no added ornamentation to mark LCD’s ascent to the arena level; the focus is still very much on merciless grooves of the Krautrock and disco varieties and Murphy’s brainily self-deprecating lyrics. Which, of course, have become no less brainy and self-deprecating now that Murphy — already age-obsessed when he wrote “Losing My Edge” 15 years ago — is closing in on 50.
“I’m 47 years old and I don’t have my glasses,” he quipped at one point. “The set list is in really big type.”
Murphy was hardly the old man at the party on Sunday evening, mind you. This was definitely not where the kids were at, as the ACC was noticeably, if far from exclusively, populated by a lot of gentlemen who resembled Murphy himself in age and appearance.
That didn’t make it any less of a party, though. The new number “Oh Baby” was a bit of a patient way to start, but the crowd — not quite big enough to fill the upper arena bowl but densely packed and enthusiastically gettin’ down on the generaladmission floor — was on its feet and delirious with pleasure at the mere sight of Murphy and the seven-piece Soundsystem, anyway. By the time things kicked properly into gear with the old single “Yr City’s a Sucker” and a thwacking “I Can Change” five minutes later, the ACC was going off as best a bunch of aging ravers and rockers in their 30s, 40s and 50s can go off.
It kept going off, through such beloved blasts from the past as “Get Innocuous!” and “Tribulations” and “Home” as well as new cuts like the frantic “Call the Police” and the wall of bass that was “Tonite,” for the entire performance — which clocked in about 10 minutes shy of two hours, according to an actual clock counting down the minutes at stage right.
In keeping with the ethos of a band known for writing songs about the silliness that goes along with writing songs and being in a band for a living, that clock served as a droll middle finger to the tired tradition of walk- ing offstage and waiting a few cursory moments to return for an encore that everybody in the house knows is going to happen whether they scream their lungs out or not.
“We’re gonna play some songs, and then we’re gonna leave and go pee and stuff, and then we’re gonna play some more songs,” announced Murphy, as “Home” died out and the clock neared the 40-minute mark. “This is completely independent of you cheering. You can get a hot dog. You can buy a Leafs jersey. You can do whatever you want.”
Cue the theme from Chariots of Fire. And then, scarcely four minutes later, LCD Soundsystem was back onstage for a ripping 30-minute nonencore that should have peaked with an unexpectedly Killing Joke-esque assault on new number “Emotional Haircut” — for a band synonymous with the word “dance,” LCD can really rock its ass off when it wants to — but sent everyone sailing out into the streets on the incredibly good vibes subsequently generated by “Dance Yrself Clean” and an epic, impassioned “All My Friends.”
“You wanted a hit? Maybe we don’t do hits,” Murphy ventured earlier in the evening during the song of the same name, and Sunday’s set list pointedly avoided such easy crowd pleasers as “Losing My Edge,” “Drunk Girls” and “Daft Punk is Playing at My House.” But therein lies the secret of LCD Soundsystem’s “comeback” success: To the faithful, they’re all hits now. Absence does indeed make the heart grow fonder.