5.24.2010

On The List :: LCD Soundsystem @ Terminal 5 [5.21.10]

This review runs in radio edit shine, with awesome pictures on Bowery's House List.

On Friday night, Terminal 5 went to full capacity to try to grasp LCD Soundsystem's official return to New York City. And this isn't even entirely true; The Friday night show was the second of four-show, sell-out run, spanning Thursday to Sunday and numbering 12,000 tickets. So, as fans packed themselves between the stage and the bar, they were part of a larger, achingly metastatic fun. Distilled as an English sentence: This Was Happening.

From the outset, the band made clear their desire to destroy any vestage of collective boundaries. On the stunning opener, "Us v Them," from 2007 release Sounds of Silver, they poked fun at the divisions that brought their audience in the door as individuals in the hopes of having them move in unison. Later in the set, front man, James Murphy, directed, in quick succession, possible second single from the brand new This Is Happening, "All I Want", the band's thesis statement, "All My Friends", and "Never Change", each full of the Confucian-style wisdom ("I wouldn't change one stupid decision for another five years of life") that breeds such a sense of unity among those who subscribe to their recommendations.

The night closed with "Losing My Edge," a song about the fragility and impermanence of youth, and "New York, I Love You," a darkly romantic ode to the city, a sense of a rapidly fading moment and the impossible mission of recapturing it. Balloons poured from the ceiling and a few thousand individual orbs all bounced together.

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