Live, LCD Soundsystem are the successors to Stop Making Sense-era Talking Heads: a sprawling collective, playing exuberant music that’s all about rhythm and groove. Blending influences as diverse as Can, The Velvet Underground, Yes, and short-lived disco-funksters Loose Joints, their songs are as intellectual as they are danceable.
LCD Soundsystem @ All Points East (Phoebe Fox)
Although no single band at All Points East today quite captures their eclecticism, the supports all fall into the broad genres of dance or indie rock: the cornerstones of what the headliners do. Astral Bakers, a quartet from Paris, are big on chimey guitars and dreamy rhythms as evidenced by their cover of Cocteau Twins‘ Cherry-Coloured Funk. Sam Shepherd, better known as Floating Points, serves up all-out dance, while Joy (Anonymous) are (as their name implies) all about euphoric house.
Brooklyn-based trio Nation Of Language thrillingly update ’80s synthpop with their sound (heavy on Aidan Noell‘s keyboards and programmed beats) and singer Ian Devaney‘s New Romantic tone. The pulsating On Division Street and insistent Across That Fine Line, showcasing Devaney’s guitar playing, are standouts. The soft spoken Jai Paul, playing his first UK festival after making his live debut a little over a year ago, brings a full band, his unique vocalising, and 15 years of material including the funktastic Jasmine, angelic slow jam BTSTU, and positively bouncing Str8 Outta Mumbai.
The Kills, in turn, are all-out garage rock and the band on the bill who come closest to the spirit of LCD Soundsystem‘s thrashy Jump Into The Fire. With little more than Alison Mosshart‘s gritty voice and occasional contributions on guitar and keys, Jamie Hince‘s jagged guitar playing and sometime singing, and sparse drum tracks, the duo aren’t low on volume, swagger, or ferocity. Mosshart, especially, isn’t short on energy; constantly moving around the stage and giving her all on tracks like U.R.A. Fever, Going To Heaven, LA Hex, and stomping closer Future Starts Slow.
Jockstrap are as big on attitude but not consistency. Another duo — Taylor Skye on keys, synths, samples, and all sorts of other electronic stuff; Georgia Ellery on ethereal vocals, occasional guitar, and, eventually, stilts decorated to look like legs made of boulders — they’re more interested in mashing genres from hip-hop to country. Jennifer B pairs arabesque vibes with The Neptunes-style beats. Glasgow melds bits featuring acoustic guitar and what sounds like a kora with bits of foot-stomping string-drenched Americana. Greatest Hits is awash with lush ’70s soul, soaring vocals, sirens, skittering beats, spoken lyrics, and big orchestral swells. Concrete Over Water boasts falsetto, gospel choir, martial drumming, overblown string arrangements, restrained voice-and-organ interludes, squiggly synths, and pitch-shifted vocals in the space of six minutes.
NewDad offer more focus and restraint in their nine-song set that proves why they’re at the forefront of the current shoegaze resurrection. Julie Dawson‘s gauzy vocals are the perfect foil for guitarist Sean O’Dowd‘s shimmering sound while Cara Joshi‘s melodic bass lines embellish and drive — rather than just anchor — the music. Their set’s an almost chronological trek through their discography, showing the quartet’s evolution from debut EP Waves‘ throbbing Drown, gauzy Slowly, and desperate I Don’t Recognise You via the more dramatic and dynamic Spring (off the Banshee EP) to the heights of their first full-length album, Madra. Sickly Sweet brims with confidence; the propulsive In My Head is all about Fiachra Parslow‘s drums and the interplay between the guitars of Dawson and O’Dowd; the assertive Nightmares and Angel make the absolute most of bass playing that would impress even Peter Hook. A technical issue with the singer’s guitar delays the title track — Irish for dog, she explains; cue barks from the audience — but NewDad are unfazed; they end their set with an emotional rush.
Pixies take a less systematic approach to their set. Recognising they’re playing to (mostly) LCD Soundsystem fans, almost half the songs are from their biggest album, Doolittle. So we get the likes of Gouge Away (still menacing), Wave Of Mutilation (still raw and ragged), Here Comes Your Man (still effortlessly breezy), and Monkey Gone To Heaven (still hugely shoutable: “And if the devil is six/ Then God is seven”). We also get other big hitters instantly recognisable to even the most casual fan: Caribou, with its rasped verses and crooned chorus; grunge template U-Mass; wonderfully twisted love song Velouria; and the inevitable Where Is My Mind, a song he’s performed so many times that Black Francis can’t be arsed to stick to the vocal melody.
There’s nothing at all from the four albums they’ve released in the past decade, but that’s the last concession to the festival audience. They play a new song — the quiet-loud-quiet anthem The Vegas Suite with its hopeful refrain of “he’s coming to save us” and some beautiful vocal harmonies from new bass player Emma Richardson — but it’s not one of the singles they’ve already released from forthcoming album The Night the Zombies Came. And they play a number of lesser-known tracks and covers, like the wiry, bellowed The Happening; runaway rendition of The Jesus And Mary Chain‘s Head On; haunting Richardson-sung take on In Heaven (Lady in the Radiator Song); rocked-up country-folk of Neil Young‘s Winterlong; and a completely raging Isla de Encanta.
Despite the focused expressions and complete lack of between-song chat, the band really seem to be enjoying their set in the sun. During Vamos, Joey Santiago even resorts to playing a guitar solo with the peak of his cap. And by the time their thrilling set is all over (too quickly), they’re all broad grins as they wave and take a collective bow, seemingly knowing they’ve been the highlight of the day so far.
But LCD Soundsystem have no intention of being eclipsed today. As soon as Lou Reed drawls “We’re gonna have a real good time together” on the intro tape, it’s obvious that James Murphy and the seven astonishing musicians surrounding him are intent on turning Victoria Park into a heaving club complete with pounding soundtrack and giant disco ball. With one track bleeding into another, as if mixed by a DJ in the sky, the likes of aggressively hypnotic Us v Them, morosely upbeat You Wanted A Hit, synthy sensation Tribulations, and glitchy electro-grimey Tonite get the arms raised and even too-cool Londoners moving. A sublime Oh Baby is an opportunity to catch a breath, before the krautrock metronomics of I Can Change start raising the BPMs once more. Your City Is A Sucker contrasts a funk groove with Murphy’s spoken vocal (falsetto perfectly intact), before Get Innocuous! (entrancing synth groove, high-precision drumming, massed vocals, synchronised chanting) explodes with joy.
It sounds like a celebration; all the more remarkable because the band are mourning. Murphy only reveals this halfway through the set, introducing Someone Great with a dedication. “Yesterday, we lost a very dear friend of ours, Justin Chearno. We’re all fucking destroyed. We’re trying our best. We love him and miss him. This sucks,” he tells a hushed audience. “Thank you for being here and being a part of it.”
Frankly, it feels like an honour. Despite the circumstances, Losing My Edge retains its innate humour and mock braggadocio. Home makes full use of all the keyboards, modular synths, and bits of percussion crowding the stage, while the pure, undiluted rock of Jump Into The Fire is all-out drums, guitar, and bass — and probably not the best choice of songs to move towards the back of the bouncing crowd. Even where the masses have thinned out, in front of the hot dog stand opposite the mini ferris wheel, people are dancing on their own, swaying and singing along to the mass choral vocals of Dance Yrself Clean before starting to jump as the song really kicks in.
New York, I Love You But You’re Bringing Me Down is tough. An emotional Murphy, who’d been high-kicking the drummer’s hi-hat earlier, has to stop singing for a few seconds to compose himself and ask the audience for their help. The crowd oblige by singing along en masse while the music and emotion build and build. That emotion feeds into All My Friends, which, tinged with sadness, still feels like a celebration — especially as Murphy belts out “This could be the last time/ So here we go” or the closing refrain of “If I could see all my friends tonight”.
Even out in a field in east London, music has the power to uplift, heal, or just make you want to dance.
Live review of All Points East 2024 featuring LCD Soundsystem @ Victoria Park London on 23rd August 2024 by Nils van der Linden. Photos by Phoebe Fox, Bethan Miller Co, and Ellie Koepke (courtesy of All Points East).
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