Blast from dance-band past
Instead of horns, they had synths. And rather than swing, they grooved.
But in terms of the service they were providing their audience, James Murphy and LCD Soundsystem weren’t so different Friday evening at the Hollywood Palladium from the old big bands that performed there in the 1940s.
Kicking off a five-night stand set to run through Tuesday, the New York dance-rock group pumped out a steady stream of live rhythms that kept the capacity crowd moving for nearly two hours.
“Thanks for coming to watch us with your eyeballs,” Murphy said not long into
the concert. Then he asked if everybody had gotten their fill of shooting “little movies” with their smartphones — one modern habit he could clearly do without.
Getting people to lose themselves in an endless beat has always been central to Murphy’s mission with LCD Soundsystem, which he started around 2002 after first making his name as a DJ and producer.
But recently, the band has been defined by additional ideas. In 2011, Murphy decided to dissolve LCD Soundsystem, then made its breakup the focal point of both an epic farewell concert at Madison Square Garden and a thoughtful documentary that wondered how a band should say goodbye.
Last year, he revived the group to play Coachella (among other lucrative festival gigs), triggering just as many questions about the ethics involved in a reunion. And that opened the door for the comeback chatter that surrounded “American Dream,” the excellent album LCD Soundsystem released in September.
Now, though, Murphy appears to have shaken all those extraneous concerns; Friday’s gig showcased a band that’s rediscovered its core purpose.
Indeed, there was something almost utilitarian about LCD Soundsystem’s performance as it churned through old hits like “Dance Yrself Clean” and “Someone Great,” along with a generous handful of tunes from “American Dream,” including “Oh Baby,” “Call the Police” and “Tonite.”
With more than half a dozen members playing keyboards, guitars and plenty of percussion, the group seemed more attuned to executing its propulsive grooves than to putting across the kind of personality or star power that many pop acts emphasize onstage.
On “American Dream,” as on LCD Soundsystem’s earlier records, Murphy holds forth eloquently (and often hilariously) about his various fears and neuroses; he’s a lyricist worth paying close attention to. But here he handled his words like just another rhythmic tool that might help set the audience into motion — as though he were Tommy Dorsey, in other words, not Frank Sinatra.
Sometimes that meant the show lacked the emotion that Murphy specializes in bringing to dance music. “Someone Great,” for instance, was more evenkeeled than you want a song about receiving a dreaded phone call to be. “New York, I Love You but You’re Bringing Me Down,” a woozy piano ballad the band performed just before its encore, had the feel of a muchneeded breather, rather than a sigh of exhaustion.
And because the group skipped its most energetic rave-ups — “Drunk Girls” and “Daft Punk Is Playing at My House” — some of the midtempo material blurred together in a way it never does on LCD Soundsystem’s expertly programmed records.
But then consistency seemed to be Murphy’s goal above all others Friday. Having made his return, he was demonstrating that he could do this forever.