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“North American Scum” is a white whale of LCD Soundsystem setlists, with the band playing the 2007 Sound of Silver banger more infrequently than fans (raises hand) might like. (LCD in fact didn’t seem to play it at all between 2011 and 2024, although they were, to be fair, also on hiatus from 2011 through 2016.)
It was thus a thrill when they let the song rip fairly early in their Saturday night mainstage set. Perhaps it was also projection, but the lyrics — “Oh, I don’t know, I don’t know, oh, where to begin/Well, we’re North Americans/But in the end, make the same mistakes all over again/Come on, North America” — certainly felt like commentary on the sad and confusing state of current affairs in the U.S.
In fact it requires a certain degree of dissociation, suspension of reality and/or mental gymnastics to enjoy dancing at a music festival with your friends while ICE agents roam the streets, the environment continues its collapse, mass shootings persist, public figures are assassinated, income inequality deepens and censorship takes hold over civil liberties we thought were innate. It was hard not to be amongst the crowd over the weekend and not wonder how many people had canceled their Disney+ and Hulu subscriptions in the days following Jimmy Kimmel’s temporary suspension from his show. Attending any given music festival is a major privilege, and sometimes one feels guilty about it when things outside the gates feel so despairing. And simultaneously what a welcome relief it is to just dance for awhile.
With much to mourn in America right now, James Murphy put it aptly while singing “I don’t know, I don’t know, oh where to begin.” But the beauty of an LCD set is not only that they’re one of the best live acts of a generation, but that they are thus so because their music has tremendous intellect and emotional weight. You can dance to it, and you can cry too, and a lot of people were doing both throughout the show as the group tore through essentials like “Home” and “Dance Yrself Clean” along with “Someone Great,” an anthem of love, loss and the pragmatic realities of when someone great is gone.
The song felt especially apt on Saturday given that the dance world lost a giant over the weekend, with the announcement coming earlier in the day that Keith McIver of legendary Scottish duo Optimo (Espacio) had died from brain cancer at age 57. Murphy honored McIver during the show, saying the band had lost a friend while wearing a yellow T-shirt declaring “No DFA Without Optimo,” a reference to the crucial influence the duo had on Murphy’s legendary DFA label.
