Bands are like boxers: rarely do they walk away at the height of their powers. So in many ways LCD Soundsystem’s Easter Sunday return at Webster Hall – the first of two warm-up gigs ahead of a summer-long comeback tour on the North American and European festival circuit – came as no surprise. For some the return was a betrayal, and flew in the face of 2011’s epochal four-hour farewell at Madison Square Garden and how their surprising withdrawal five years ago informed the New York dance-punk collective’s mythos. Apparently, owning a wine bar and scoring New Yorkers’ subway commutes wasn’t enough for the unlikeliest rock star in a generation.
this is happening:https://t.co/WvaCS0Afha@PanoramaNYC pic.twitter.com/TzZy0da5dL
— lcdsoundsystem (@lcdsoundsystem) March 24, 2016
Tickets for the band’s first show in five years had been distributed via a slapdash online lottery days prior and the marquee outside referenced the work-in-progress aspect of the performance, reading: TEST IN PROGRESS – PLEASE STAND BY. Shortly after the house lights went down on Sunday, James Murphy emerged in a blazer and white V-neck tee to coos from the thankfully undersold 1,500-capacity room, the band launched into a 14-song, two-hour set drawing mostly from their three studio albums – and within moments it was as if they’d never even left.
The self-styled resurrection – monochromatic posters for the gig bore the tagline BACK FROM THE DEAD – wasn’t entirely without hiccups. The rollocking Get Innocuous! opener gave way to an aborted rendition of I Can Change that found the band standing awkwardly on stage for nearly four minutes as Murphy tried making peace with an uncooperative instrument. “This is why we had warm-up shows,” deadpanned keyboardist and vocalist Nancy Whang from beneath a Mia Wallace-style wig.
But within minutes the long-awaited revival was back on the rails as the six-piece broke into 2005’s anarchic Daft Punk Is Playing at My House, crowdsourced glowsticks and bubbles filling the air in the second-floor ballroom. The throbbing disco of Tribulations gave way to to the unrestrained thrash of Movement, while Sound of Silver heavyweights Us v Them and Someone Great had the band’s devout fans alternating between dancefloor ecstasy and tears. The two-song encore – Dance Yrself Clean and All My Friends – sent a parade of the faithful into the night.
For those of us who spilled off our various turnip trucks into New York City in the mid-aughts LCD Soundsystem offered a unified theory of this mad metropolis – as much a Right Band, Right Place, Right Time as ever. “It’s been a hot minute,” the reluctant frontman said toward the back end of the two-hour set. Turns out not even Murphy could resist the siren call of the ring. But Sunday’s spirited gig showed his dance-punk underdog collective still has a taste for the fight, belonging not to the history books but very much to the present.
