Where are your friends tonight?

Review of LCD Soundsystem @ 013, Tilburg.

At the Modest Mouse concert, that's where my friends are. This is also the reason I happen to be at the LCD Soundsystem gig: a friend of mine had bought tickets for both Modest Mouse and LCD Soundsystem, and ultimately decided to go see Modest Mouse. The LCD concert wasn't sold out and therefore being unable to sell the ticket(s), my friend decided to offer me one for free. As it was rather last minute and seeing I had to get up at 5 the next morning, it took some contemplation whether to take the ticket or not. Eventually I decided that I should not be as stupid to turn down a 25 euro ticket (I am still Dutch after all) and just go, especially considering the recent threats of them quitting.

After rushing to 013 in Tilburg, James Murphy & co (or rather in the order: co and James Murphy) mount the stage at 9 o’clock, which is half an hour later than promised on the 013 website. The well-known beats of the tune ‘Us v Them’ fill the room and James Murphy remarks he’s happy to do a clubshow after a summer of touring festivals (it has only been a few weeks since I saw them at Lowlands), because they can now play more than 5 songs for a change. This obviously results in applause.

The two-hour set consists of a nice mixture of old and new songs, among which ‘Movement’, ‘Tribulations’, ‘Yr City Is A Sucker’, ‘All Your Friends’, ‘Yeah’, ‘Drunk Girls’ and ‘I Can Change’. However, the crowd, an interesting combination of youngsters and people who could be their (terribly cool) parents (they all somehow seemed to be Wayne Coyne lookalikes), didn’t put on their dancing shoes until ‘Daft Punk Is Playing At My House’, which proves to stay the most anticipated of their alternative disco/electro tracks.

The climax of the gig for me however, is when they play ‘Losing My Edge’, possibly my favourite LCD Soundsystem track, which expresses a ‘Been there, done that/I have seen it all’-attitude, as well as an admiration for the talent of the threatening ‘kids coming up from behind’. Murphy once explained the song was about himself; when he was a DJ he felt incredibly cool, and when he was out of job, he was afraid the feeling was going away, whereas he didn’t play any songs he created, just tracks by other people . The whole song is a play on Murphy feeling silly and horrified about his attitude.
The great sarcastic punchline of the song; ‘I hear that everybody you know, is more relevant than everybody I know’ is made more aggressive live by changing some of the words, such as the last part: ‘[…] is more relevant than all these FUCKERS I know’. For some reason the line ‘I hear your band has sold their guitars to buy turntables / I hear your band has sold their turntables to buy guitars’ is changed into ‘ […] / I hear your band has sold their turntables to buy dvdplayers’. Say huh?

James Murphy, predictably dressed in his usual tight white t-shirt and jeans, always appears to be a perfectionist to me. He is constantly checking out the equipment, signaling to the crew his microphone needs to be tuned and it often happens to be poor Nancy Whang who is the subject of James’ neurotic scrutiny. Pat Mahoney on the other hand is the teacher’s pet tonight, as Murphy constantly demands applause for his magnificent, shorts-wearing drummer. Also, some physical difficulties become visible when James grabs his leg halfway through the gig, and while trying to do some stretching he explains he has hurt his back during the tour, and now has pains in his leg, something he attributes to the inconveniences of getting older.

In the 3-song encore we are treated to ‘Pow Pow’ and the concert is finished off by ‘New York I Love You’ mixed with a bit of the song ‘New York State Of Mind’ by Alicia Keys and Jay-Z. Despite the mere 4 hours of sleep that followed after the gig, which in combination with a night of partying in Amsterdam the night after I now blame for me being ill, it was SO worth the free ticket, and hey it might just be the last we get to see of them (for a while). Maybe I should send Isaac Brock a thank you card or something?