Photo via underwhelmer's photostream

​LCD Soundsystem
Music Hall of Williamsburg
Thursday, April 8th

With Karen O decamped for LA, playing foil to Spike's Wild Things, and the Strokes figuring out whether they're still a band or not, James Murphy's LCD Soundsystem have become the best Classic New York Rock game in town. Actually, they're more than that. Based on the evidence of this hastily pulled off appearance (Murphy was continually at pains to call it not proper show, but a public opportunity for the new six-piece on "trying to work out being a band again"), they're also New York's soul, its conscience, and, with Murphy invoking age at every turn, its memory as well. Parental? Sure. But as a counterweight to the ever-present porn of NYC youth fetishism, such knowing, lived-in swagger is comfort to those in the audience who may have been "there" too. (And yes, they played a messy-as-fuck "Losing My Edge"). After all, who better than keyboardist Nancy Whang to tell the bros after a raucous version of "Us v. Them" that if you're dancing, shall we say, aggressively, and there are no women around, "you're doing it incorrectly"?

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Fuck Buttons get their Fischer Price on. All photos by Kate Glicksberg

​Fuck Buttons
Bowery Ballroom
Monday, November 2

When Animal Collective played a crammed, 16-years-old-and-up show for fans and industry-fucks at the Bowery Ballroom in January, I chanced to meet a chubby 17-year-old from Westchester named "Sean," who asked me to buy beer for him. "Sean" wore a Fuck Buttons t-shirt, and some sky-blue Indian feathers around his neck. He struck me as the kind of kid who would probably have asked me for doses if he a) knew the form that LSD comes in, and b) courageously intuited more about the guy already enabling his underage consumption. His FB t-shirt was an invaluable part of the teen rebellion garb, more badge than endorsement, like the way St. Mark's skinheads rock Subhumans gear. But a pose can also be a valuable gateway drug.

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So the Junior Boys fete last night at Webster Hall was somewhat of a debacle. Specifically, massive equipment failure forced them to abort almost every song they attempted to play, amid mild booing and a far stronger current of audience sympathy. A half-hour in they gave up, told everyone to keep their tickets, and promised to return. At a rescheduled date far off in the future, they meant. Gig's over.

Thus, in lieu of the show review Piotr Orlov intended to write for us, we instead offer dispatches from his Twitter account, with added clarification.

Ahem:

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Photo via Namestage

Animal Collective
The Bowery Ballroom
January 21

If at this point you've been exposed to the ark of Animal Collective buzz, you've likely already chosen to side with them or against them; as in the case of black licorice and Brooklyn Vegan message boards, it's less about middling judgments than extreme fanaticism. Pro- and con-. More philosophically labyrinthine - and, frankly, fun -- would be the whys, the whats, and the hows of getting here (last night's beyond-sold-out Bowery show, the praised-to-high-heaven new album) from there (childhood friends making four-track rackets). Hyphen-built crit snigglets like "freak-folk," "art-fi" and "jam-band" may have once been defining (I'd argue not), but there must be something simple that could explain the phenomenon that AC's turned into/inspired, right?

Let's start and end with the single most important (non-gender-oriented) insight of Madonna Ciccone's career, that "you can dance for inspiration" (a sentiment echoed in the opening moments of Merriwether Post Pavillion); then head directly to last night's set closer and the album's ecstatic finale, "Brother Sport." As much as any song in the 90+ minute set, the reaction "Brother Sport" elicited from the polar confluence of "16 & under" fan-clubbers and supportive bizzers, was an exultation of physical release in rhythmic motion. Wholly appropriate for what is essentially an African techno track that beckons you to "open up your throat" and scream.

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