Live Music News & Reviews

LCD Soundystem played a triumphant gig in Brixton on Friday night, despite having technical problems at the outset. Owing to the keyboards not working, the band played opener Us v Them twice.

LCD Soundystems had made a huge effort to make the gigs, flying to Madrid and then taking a long overland journey to London to beat the volcanic ash flight restrictions.

Highlights for me included the new songs “Pow Pow”, with its superb David Byrne-esque lyrics and chorus, and “I Can Change” as well as old favourite “Losing my Edge”. James Murphy is a master at crafting slowbuilding songs, which makes for great live performances.  You get the feeling he is something of a control freak as he prowls the stage adjusting knobs and switches on his bandmates’ equipment, and the complete replaying of the first song seemed a little unnecessary, but when it results in music this good who cares? The only disappointment for me was hearing just 3 songs of the excellent “This is Happening”, which Murphy explained was because he used to hate seeing bands who played too much new stuff when their new album wasn’t even out yet. Perhaps it was punishment for those that had illegally downloaded the album (Murphy recently pleaded on his knees for fans not to download the leak at a New York gig). Whatever the reason it was hard to complain too loudly when they finished with Daft Punk is Playing at my House and New York I Love you…during which a hundreds of white balloons were dropped onto the crowd.