Title: Shut Up and Play The Hits
Director: Will Lovelace and Dylan Southern
Cast: James Murphy, LCD Soundsystem and Chuck Klosterman
LCD Soundsystem’s last show was on April 2nd 2011. The band dismembered afterwards but announcement the upcoming breakup was released a few months before. Going into this last performance was captured on film and the result is this documentary by Will Loveless and Dylan Southern. It serves as half a documentary and half interview by writer Chuck Klosterman with the mastermind behind it all, James Murphy. In the interview, Murphy reflects on the last 6 years of LCD Soundsystem, the reasoning behind the breakup and his future. But in regards to “Shut Up and Play The Hits” as a whole, it’s a love letter to the LCD Soundsystem fans but not much else for general audiences.
LCD Soundsystem is James Murphy and James Murphy is LCD Soundsystem. Interestingly, Murphy never intended LCD Soundsystem to be an actual band. He wrote and produced a self-titled record in 2005 and sooner after the success of that record demanded that he form a band and start playing shows and start touring. Murphy makes the point early on that he feels the band LCD Soundsystem is the best LCD Soundsystem cover band on the planet. The film follows moments after the last show at Madison Square Garden and the day after.
Murphy wakes up in his New York apartment after the final show and things are exactly the same as the morning before. He still has to make coffee. He still has to walk his dog. He’s a normal human being. Intercut with an interview with Chuck Klosterman, serves to put context on his career and life and how these things relate to pop culture as a whole. He makes the point a person’s career is judged not only on their successes but also their failures.
“Shut Up and Play The Hits” serves very well as a concert documentary but the moments that are not part of that concert remain problematic. There is no clear insight to the last 6 years of LCD Soundsystem that general audiences would find rewarding. It’s almost too insular, playing to existing fans of the band rather than appealing to a general audience. So I really can’t recommend this film to anyone unless you are a huge fan of LCD Soundsystem as I don’t even feel like this works as a piece of curiosity for the uninitiated. “Shut Up and Play The Hits” hits hard but plays less to general audiences as it does for LCD Soundsystem fans.
Technical: B+
Story: C+
Overall: B
by @Rudie_Obias
