Shut Up and Play the Hits.

  • Director: Dylan Southern, Will Lovelace.
  • Country: United Kingdom.
  • Duration: 108 min.
  • Year: 2011.
  • Original language: English.O.V.S.S
  • Leadings: James Murphy, Keith Wood, Pat Mahoney, Al Doyle, Nancy Whang.<
  • Editor(s): Mark Burnett.
  • Camera: Reed Morano
  • Music supervisor: Mathieu Dugelay
  • Producer (S): Lucas Ochoa, Thomas Benski, James Murphy.
  • Film company: Pulse Films Ltd.
Synopsis

A planned death. James Murphy’s last waltz, as the most unlikely rockstar in history: mature, mild, well-read with the face of a magazine music-critic, and hardly inclined to make a fool of himself in the name of success or fame (“I had a life before all of this”, he states, a la Bill Withers). In this comprehensive film, we meet him a week before the mass farewell concert thrown by LCD Soundsystem in Madison Square Gardens. The story goes like this: a flurry of live hits (“Someone great”, “Losing my edge”, “All my friends”, etc., alongside covers of “Jump into the fire” by Nilsson, and Alan Vega’s “Bye bye Bayou”), interwoven with snippets of the frontman’s daily existence and his humble perception of the group. Murphy speaks candidly about life on the road (“I got grey hair every time we did a tour”); of the early days (“We were like an LCD Soundsystem cover band”); of ambition that was incompatible with humility (“We didn’t feel special but we wanted to leave our mark); of composition, of the reasons behind the split; overindulgence and fear of mass success (but also fear of failure). A true testament, filmed with impeccable taste.