LCD Soundsystem is not a flashy live band.
Sure, they employ the giant disco ball for a few songs (“Oh Baby,” “Change Yr Mind” and “Home”), but you’ll never see the eight-piece engaging in over-the-top antics or talking too much—save for frontman James Murphy’s intros and subtle jokes.
Yet the NYC outfit’s reunion after a (once definitive) four-year breakup and subsequent release of riveting fourth record American Dream (their first in seven years) signaled a pivotal shift: they’ve increasingly welcomed limelight rather than shirking it by assuming headliner status at many fests over the past year. And—in a move most indicative of interest in cementing their place in music history—they finally relented Wednesday night to filming an Austin City Limits TV taping.
“We’ve never done anything quite like this…you are all there, and we’re here, and they’re there,” said Murphy, gesturing toward the cameramen. “You’re being held back by a piece of tape—I can’t tell if it’s out of respect, or because you don’t want to be up here.”
Clearly, they weren’t totally comfortable with this scenario and the sort of celebrity icon standing it denotes, but going through with it revealed graceful acceptance of that status, detectable during kinetic performances of first album tracks “Tribulations” and “Yr City’s a Sucker,” cathartic sing-along “Someone Great” and power-waltz main set closer “New York, I Love You But You’re Bringing Me Down.”
It was telling that they omitted live staple “Dance Yrself Clean” (perhaps a subtle protest to this whole commercial affair), but the group’s hat-tips toward its own momentousness in light of the concert’s documentation continued when Murphy stopped to give context for several songs and, in a particularly rare instance, provided insight into his personal life.
“‘You need to be more interesting’...my family has been on me about that for awhile,” Murphy remarked prior to launching the evening’s final dance-off to “All My Friends.” “You can feign interest, but you can’t feign interesting.”
Fortunately, that’s something LCD Soundsystem has never had to do, and with a songbook that will doubtless stand the test of time, they never will.
