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He can change
Though I’d only seen LCD Soundsystem once before I saw them play the twilight set at the White Stage today, I would characterize them as a safe bet. Funk is hard, which is why !!!’s Friday night show was good-not-great, but rock is fairly simple as long as you stick to basics, and James Murphy, who is more of a technician than an artist, understands basics very well. His becoming a singer with LCD Soundsystem seems almost like a fluke, considering how self-conscious he is. On stage he looked timid and cautious, until the music consumed him and drove him to ever more frantic fits of self-expression.
What’s weird is that Murphy has a really good voice. He’s not just conscientious, he’s talented. His falsetto eruptions always hit their highs right on target, and since he’s prone to eruptions of all kinds it makes a big difference in the way his compositions play out live. On record, they spin of from his highly personal lyrics, whose idiosyncrasies reveal a very distinct personality. On stage the personality is expressed through tics and mannerisms: Murphy plugs up his ears to hear himself better, and the special condenser mike he uses (a studio tool that isn’t often used in concert situations) is small and lozenge-shaped, so he often looks like he’s talking into a CB.
And it’s difficult to suss the dynamic between Murphy and his band. The songs build on simple rock patterns and repeated verbal phrases. The song “Pow Pow,” with its litany of “from this position…” statements, keeps accumulating on Murphy’s more desperate attempts to explain his feelings of ambiguity. “All My Friends” is a semi-paranoid rant whose boogie potential actually intensifies into full-blown paranoia. And since everyone in the White Stage field was dancing to beat the band, they only enabled that desperation.
Fortunately for those who were dancing in earnest, Atoms for Peace was about to start, and halfway through LCD Soundsystem’s set the field began to drain, freeing up more space for those who expressed physically what Murphy was trying to get out verbally. “Love is a curse,” he yelled as the masses pumped their fists and moved their feet, “I can change.”
That would be a mistake. Murphy is the great humanizer of dance music, and if people responded to the indestructible beat, they also responded to his personhood. In his white t-shirt and permanent three-day stubble, Murphy is the least likely disco star, and an even less likely rock star. (though, to be honest, he only played one of his straightforward rock songs, “Drunk Girls”). But he’s still a star.
photo: Ryota Mori
