Last night, at Webster Hall in New York City, LCD Soundsytem played its first show since breaking up in 2011. Webster Hall’s Grand Ballroom, which holds about 1,500 people, is a far cry from Madison Square Garden, where the band played a string of sold-out “farewell” shows almost exactly five years ago. But it was the perfect venue for a comeback. Yes, there were technical difficulties, which seemed to get under James Murphy’s skin. “We played Easter with a keyboard called the Demon,” Murphy joked, while Gavin Rossum fiddled with an unruly modular synthesizer that looked like it belonged in Jacques Cousteau’s submarine. “Let me tell you also, it is a demon. It decided to fuck our souls!”
But no one who wasn’t on stage seemed to mind, and the band zipped through a tight two-hour set, while the jubilant crowd jumped and danced and sang along to the hits. And they only played the hits, even though LCD Soundsytem has a new album coming soon. One thing that did change, however, was some of the lyrics. In “Daft Punk is Playing in My House,” Murphy joked about Pharrell joining the band. “New York I Love You But You’re Bringing Me Down,” already a song about the end of an era, was even more poignant. The New York City that birthed LCD Soundsystem is long gone, but that didn’t really matter last night. The band closed with “All My Friends” and the crowd shouted along—“To tell the truth/This could be the last time”—even though we knew it wouldn’t be.