LCD Soundsystem at All Points East 2024

James Murphy is a rare musician who is simultaneously understated and in your face. His band, LCD Soundsystem, now a 20-plus year project, often seems to marry the off-kilter with the spectacularly catchy. At All Points East in East London’s Victoria Park, all this is on show and more. Following on from a rocking Pixies set, Murphy and his band are the perfect accompaniment to an August dusk and night.

Openers Us V Them and You Wanted a Hit serve as an introduction, but it’s Tribulations where things fully kick into swing. It’s a genuine epic – one that still sounds like a fresh floor filler almost two decades after its release. After the interlude of the more recent – from 2017’s American Dream – Tonite and Oh Baby, it’s on to I Can Change – a song that bizarrely marries electronic effects resembling a retro computer game with Murphy’s poignant, maudlin vocals. Then there’s the bouncy Someone Great and one of Murphy’s signature tracks – Losing My Edge. Its lyrics describe someone who is ageing out of their music scene – no longer the bright young thing they want to be.

Yet Murphy probably suits an elder statesman role better than he did when LCD Soundsystem emerged from the back end of the New York rock scene of the new millennium. Slightly older, more awkward, and less ostentatiously cool than the principals of The Strokes or Yeah Yeah Yeahs – both of whom played last year’s All Points East – and more of a record aficionado, he did seem slightly out of time, even when having indie hits. Now he commands the stage with the air of someone with two decades of critical adoration behind him.

The group, with Nancy Whang on keyboards and synth, Pat Mahoney on drums, Tyler Pope on bass, Al Doyle (of Hot Chip fame) and Matt Thornley on guitar, blend seamlessly as you’d expect from those who have been working together for a long time, lending their talents to different skills where needed.

By the time we reach New York, I Love You but You’re Bringing Me Down, and closer, the regretful, driving anthem All My Friends, it’s easy to forget that LCD Soundsystem have left arguably their biggest hit, Daft Punk Is Playing at My House, on the table.

But that’s probably a good thing – its quirky ebullience would not quite fit with the joyous introspection of the mood skillfully created by Murphy and his band – which hypnotises the massed crowds before its sounds drift out across towards central London.

Mark Worgan
Photos: Courtesy of All Points East/Nick Bennett (supports)

For further information and future events visit LCD Soundsystem’s website here.

Watch the video for the single All My Friends here: