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forty-eight hours of goodbye lcd soundsystem went out playing the hits words dani lurie
It begins, fittingly, with an end. The opening titles roll out over the scene of a concert already over, soundtracked by the feedback drone of the equipment as it’s taken apart for the very last time. So begins Shut Up And Play The Hits, a new documentary directed by Dylan Southern and Will Lovelace that chronicles the days surrounding the swansong performance of LCD Soundsystem. It was last year that James Murphy announced the retirement of his band with a farewell show at New York’s iconic Madison Square Gardens. That heady night in April saw 14,000 fans pour into the city’s behemoth arena for the three-and-a-half hour long spectacle, many of them dressed in white and black as per the band’s request. “Come ready to have fun,” instructed the announcement. “If it’s a funeral, let’s have the best funeral ever.” LCD Soundsystem, under the leadership of James Murphy, are known for their dynamic, genre-transversing mix of dance, disco and indie rock. Murphy’s lyrics are intelligent, honest and sardonically witty, often selfsatirising and reflecting on the New York dance-punk scene and its haze of parties, drugs and DJ sets in which the band made its name. At once cynical and raging against cynicism with the promise of a good time, LCD Soundsystem provided a reliable and beloved soundtrack to the dance floors of the past decade. Murphy was already 31 when he formed the group in 2001 and rose to recognition with the debut single Losing My Edge, a comically acerbic number that he wrote about his experiences as a DJ. Now he’s the leading man in a film that celebrates the resonance of his band and their amicable death at the height of their popularity. When we speak to James Murphy, he has just woken up in a friend’s apartment, which sits atop a mountain ridge on the north side of Los James Murphy in scenes from Shut Up and Play the Hits, at LCD Soundsystem’s final gig, and with his dog Petunia the morning after the show.
Angeles. He drinks coffee and notes the vista of the window that looks out over the city, eagerly describing hummingbirds and helicopters as they come into view. “I wasn’t really thinking about the end that much,” he says of the band’s finale. “It took a couple of days for it to sink in. It still hasn’t really sunk in because here I am doing interviews about it.” The day of the big show offered little time for self-reflection. Murphy spent the hours running around handling details and fixing the technical problems that plagued their set up. Most of the day had been eaten up by complications with a lighting rig, which meant the band didn’t have enough time to soundcheck before the important performance. “It was really stressful,” remembers Murphy, “but then I just accepted that we weren’t going to have the kind of times that I wanted. And that was possibly the best way to end the band: crazy, unprepared, sort of like how we always were. We were kind of the underdogs of our own show, which felt right.” The immersive experience of music doesn’t leave a lot of room for rumination, he says. “Playing music takes up my entire brain, which is probably why I like it so much.” The finality of performing those LCD Soundsystem songs only occurred to him once they were over and he looked to the lyrics sheets that he had kept nearby over the years in case words escaped him. At last, he binned the old, dog-eared copies. It was a strange experience, he says. “I’d look at that piece of paper and I’d be thinking, ‘Oh, well I’m never going to sing that again,’ so I’d just crumple it up and throw it away.” Shut Up and Play the Hits is out on 2nd September in UK cinemas.
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forty-eight hours of goodbye lcd soundsystem went out playing the hits words dani lurie
It begins, fittingly, with an end. The opening titles roll out over the scene of a concert already over, soundtracked by the feedback drone of the equipment as it’s taken apart for the very last time. So begins Shut Up And Play The Hits, a new documentary directed by Dylan Southern and Will Lovelace that chronicles the days surrounding the swansong performance of LCD Soundsystem. It was last year that James Murphy announced the retirement of his band with a farewell show at New York’s iconic Madison Square Gardens. That heady night in April saw 14,000 fans pour into the city’s behemoth arena for the three-and-a-half hour long spectacle, many of them dressed in white and black as per the band’s request. “Come ready to have fun,” instructed the announcement. “If it’s a funeral, let’s have the best funeral ever.” LCD Soundsystem, under the leadership of James Murphy, are known for their dynamic, genre-transversing mix of dance, disco and indie rock. Murphy’s lyrics are intelligent, honest and sardonically witty, often selfsatirising and reflecting on the New York dance-punk scene and its haze of parties, drugs and DJ sets in which the band made its name. At once cynical and raging against cynicism with the promise of a good time, LCD Soundsystem provided a reliable and beloved soundtrack to the dance floors of the past decade. Murphy was already 31 when he formed the group in 2001 and rose to recognition with the debut single Losing My Edge, a comically acerbic number that he wrote about his experiences as a DJ. Now he’s the leading man in a film that celebrates the resonance of his band and their amicable death at the height of their popularity. When we speak to James Murphy, he has just woken up in a friend’s apartment, which sits atop a mountain ridge on the north side of Los James Murphy in scenes from Shut Up and Play the Hits, at LCD Soundsystem’s final gig, and with his dog Petunia the morning after the show.
Angeles. He drinks coffee and notes the vista of the window that looks out over the city, eagerly describing hummingbirds and helicopters as they come into view. “I wasn’t really thinking about the end that much,” he says of the band’s finale. “It took a couple of days for it to sink in. It still hasn’t really sunk in because here I am doing interviews about it.” The day of the big show offered little time for self-reflection. Murphy spent the hours running around handling details and fixing the technical problems that plagued their set up. Most of the day had been eaten up by complications with a lighting rig, which meant the band didn’t have enough time to soundcheck before the important performance. “It was really stressful,” remembers Murphy, “but then I just accepted that we weren’t going to have the kind of times that I wanted. And that was possibly the best way to end the band: crazy, unprepared, sort of like how we always were. We were kind of the underdogs of our own show, which felt right.” The immersive experience of music doesn’t leave a lot of room for rumination, he says. “Playing music takes up my entire brain, which is probably why I like it so much.” The finality of performing those LCD Soundsystem songs only occurred to him once they were over and he looked to the lyrics sheets that he had kept nearby over the years in case words escaped him. At last, he binned the old, dog-eared copies. It was a strange experience, he says. “I’d look at that piece of paper and I’d be thinking, ‘Oh, well I’m never going to sing that again,’ so I’d just crumple it up and throw it away.” Shut Up and Play the Hits is out on 2nd September in UK cinemas.