The Forum is such a great venue for live shows that when a gig is announced to be happening there, I always get an extra burst of anticipatory energy. As Melbourne venues go it’s hard to beat: there’s the Roman Colliseum ceiling as designed by Siegfried & Roy, the great PA, the well-designed room with seating at the back in tiers and the sloping floor to the front, not to mention the large stage. It should come as an odd twist then that despite my great enthusiasm for this great venue, that I should lose track of time beforehand (spending time on ITM amongst other things, ironically) and missed the warmup stylings of Dappled Cities Fly altogether, and just made the start of LCD Soundsystem. Out of the gold-leaf encrusted window flew my plans to be front and centre: the gig was sold out and by the time I shame-facedly slid in the door, it was well and truly packed out. I felt it prudent to hold position for a while and let the LCDs lock their nuevo-disco groove into place.
As one of the leaders of the punk-meets-discofunk movement of the 21st century, DFA Records star James Murphy AKA the nexus of LCD Soundsystem, has already put at least four years into this diffident slacker-disco sound. Taking the looseness and live feel of rock and marrying it with the basslines of disco, the 21st century dancefloor synthetics of Daft Punk and the percussive groove of Barry Manilow coked out at the Copacabana, and you have the LCD Soundsystem vibe. On stage there are more drums and percussion instruments than there are people or any other kind of noisemaker: there’s a couple of synths, a bass player, a drummer, a guitar player and James on vox. However, that’s just the basic summary: there’s a lot of instrument switcheroo going on and it seems like everyone in this band, like Howard Moon in the Mighty Boosh, is a ‘multiinstrumentalist’. In fact James Murphy seems to like to get in some sweat-inducing funky beat-the-skins work just as
much as the vocals.
They play the indie/dancefloor hits like North American Scum, Daft Punk Is Playing at My House and crowd favourite Tribulations, as well as plenty off last year’s critically-acclaimed album The Sound of Silver including the shmaltz-cabaret moment of New York, I Love You But You’re Bringing Me Down, which he uses as the concert closer (complete with discoball-ecstatic lighting – the only time he uses this particular heartstring tweaking visual move all night with it otherwise hanging forlorn and unnoticed all night until this final victorious move). They’re in form and seem to be enjoying themselves, and it must be said that in person James Murphy actually seems to have a real singing voice, as opposed to the irony-soaked NY drawl that seems to pervade his records. He seems to be moved to enthusiasm (perhaps his time on the toms is giving him a mood booster). The one detraction from Murphy’s performance is that his between-song banter can hardly be heard, let alone understood, more than a few metres from the stage.
The best thing about LCD’s live performance is their dedication to being an actual ‘disco band’, like – and this is without any intention to insult – a late 70s white boy act like KC and the Sunshine Band, The Bee Gees or something simillar… He obviously doesn’t have the ‘funk’ to be like a nu-school Parliament or Sylvester or something: he’s still a gangly white boy but he definitely wants to channel that shimmery bassline and melody-driven percussion, punctured sexed-out disco sensation, making dance tracks from pop music which when played live, can turn into a percussion and synth jam that relates to the original tracks but takes them into a spontaneous groove. In the 21st century very few bands want to jam their tracks live, but in the disco heyday bands were playing 15 minute jams based on 2 minute songs and ‘feeling’ their way to when it seemed right to stop and move on to the next, with James Brown’s band being a very famous example. There’s definitely a talent involved in allowing your musicians free reign and expression and being able to ‘conduct’ the chaos, and Murphy seems pretty adept. They take a ‘less is more’ approach to the show: less songs, but more of each song than you might expect. And as most of the appeal (a broad generalisation here) of this band is based on their dancefloor friendly hooks rather than the depth of their soul searching lyrics (ummm daft punk is playing in my house, my house… or yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah), the crowd is well pleased with getting more bassline bang for their bucks.
The only serious detracting factor was – and here comes a lecture in the making – the crowd behaviour. Somehow in getting all slacker and IRNC it seems Melbournians forget about the social lubricant that is basic courtesy. Being pushed until one nearly falls over, constantly shoved, pressed in tighter against strangers than a packet of cocktail frankfurts, and in one utterly unmentionable moment, being pushed past by some wanker in a cap and IRNC moustache who then stopped, glared and gave myself and the immediate surrounds the finger in some pathetic show of ‘power’ before stalking off. Whatever (to channel the most slacker response I can think of right now). It’s certainly annoying, and when mister sexyshimmerdiscoslacker is up there banging away at the electric toms and giving it some cowbell you just want to say ‘yeah yeah yeah yeah’ back and not be thinking about your own tribulations. But overall, like a disco ball, the performance was cheery, shiny and kept us well and truly entertained, sometimes a little dazzled, but was ultimately happily shallow and making for just a good time. Yeah yeah yeah yeah.
