CMJ 2009: Day 3 – YACHT + James Murphy

YACHT

DFA Records Showcase

Brooklyn Bowl, Brooklyn

“We are the new stepchildren of DFA,” is how Jona Bechtolt put it, and he’s right on the money. The guts and gusto of his band are at times obviously distilled from his label’s parental figure, LCD Soundsystem, but only some of those elements worked. Chunky industrial kick drum sounds: yes; Travolta-in-Grease programming thereof: no. Some of the group’s lineage here is questionable, and although mutts typically make great pets, that doesn’t mean you should bother trying to mate a lab with a marmot.

James Murphy

DFA Records Showcase

Brooklyn Bowl, Brooklyn

Uh oh, papa’s home. I’m still a little astonished that I didn’t spend Murphy’s entire DJ set wishing it was an LCD Soundsystem performance

instead, but he arrived swinging hard with glitzy house, falsetto-laden nu-disco, and golden time capsule obscurities. Montana Sextet, anybody? Predictably, the younger contingent bum-rushed the door the moment he started upstaging his new protégés. Let’s hope they stick around next time. I’ll need a crowd for cover in order to get away with stealing his iPod.