Webster Hall
New York City
Words by Clayton Deutsch
Photos by Dana Weeks

It’s Tuesday morning. My body is sore from moshing, yes moshing, as in a song about lights and music caused a riot. My liver probably needs to be transplanted. I’m supposed to get on a plane in two hours but I can’t because I don’t have my license or credit cards. Oh this is because I lost my wallet the night of the show in question…probably at some place I cant remember going to after the concert (but something tells me it was Sway). Let me just say that if anyone reading this is considering trying to get a new driver’s license at the Herald Square branch of the New York Department of Motor Vehicles at 7:30 am, still drunk and sans social security card, passport, or birth certificate after having woken up on a couch in a strange apartment which turned out to be your ex-girlfriend’s and remembering that you needed to be at the airport in two hours…don’t try it. Not gonna work! If the DMV was in Australia (shoutout to all things Modular!!!!) then you’d be in like Flint. The guy at the DMV would be all like “Hey there, good morning trainwreck! How about another photo identification today? Oh you wanna keep your sunglasses on for the picture? No problem!” But alas I was in New York. Fucking New York. America sucks. Let’s go back to the evening in question:

So Kordan, Cut Copy and the Presets killed on Sunday night at Webster Hall. Seriously. I know I was all down on NYC a second ago, but no way. Now that I’m reminiscing on it, taking you on a tour of the show in my mind’s eye, I would lose my wallet all over again for a chance to experience just another minute of it. I can’t actually believe how dope the show was. Webster Hall, which is usually the place where bands play that were cool like two years ago, got to be Santos Party House for a night (which is where the bands on the bill played a tight DJ set the night before). Shit was packed to capacity with people who danced hard. I mean I’ve always known that New York crowds are harder than anywhere else. But Sunday night blew my mind. Everyone knew the lyrics. Everyone was jumping and sweating. Everyone was getting bombed like this was the last concert they were gonna see. The jumping-up-and-down, both-hands-in-the-air-even-between-songs section extended back like thirty people deep from the stage. And you know the last time that happened at Webster hall was like 1997 at a Paul Oakenfold show.

The opening band, Kordan, went on at 8. They sounded good even though my friend Henry said they sounded like they were playing arcade fire b-sides…but he’s from England so take it or leave it. Legend has it that Brooklyn-based Kordan was “discovered” by Cut Copy during a visit to the East Village Radio studio by the Australian supergroup. After hearing the song Fantasy Nation on the air, Cut Copy had their manager contact Kordan (presumably the multi-tasking singer and songwriter Arthur Eisele) about joining their upcoming tour with the Presets. Supported by a live band (guitar, bass, drums) and a refreshing paucity (\ˈpȯ-sə-tē\ noun) of synths, laptops, mpc’s, ironic t-shirts, or laser lights, Kordan for sure exceeded expectations ripping through a seven-song set capped by Fantasy Nation, the song that triggered their meteoric rise from small-time blog notoriety to ‘Sup fame.

The Presets and Cut Copy had laser lights out the ass. I actually love the laser lights (they are like music in light…light in music…lights and music WHAT????). I just made that quip earlier because didn’t want Kordan to feel bad for not getting shit for laser lights… anyways… So, The Presets went on after Kordan, taking the stage at 9 pm. Julian Hamilton was wearing a shrunken pink blazer. In the blue lights that flooded the stage, he was looking like an obedient sons fit model seen through 3-d glasses. Shit was game over. He and Kim Moyes pounded through a devastating set of their hardest songs, dropping electrobomb after elecrobomb effectively Terry Tate-ing every man, woman, and child in a two-mile radius. NYC got the fuck up and almost broke through the floor of Webster hall.

BUT, the Presets are a Jekyll and Hyde act capable of Terry Tate-ing you one minute and caressing you lovingly the next with beautiful electroballads. Let’s just say they took the lace off the panties for this NYC crowd…they didn’t play any of their dream-electro songs like everything on the second half of Beams and Anywhere off of Apocalypso – a song which happens to boast the most beautiful chorus ever. The Presets have never so dominated as when they dropped Are You the One? halfway through their set on Sunday night. I mean I’ve only seen them one other time (Hiro Ballroom in 2006) but there’s no way they could top what they did on Sunday… and what they did was lay waste to the huddled masses…scorched earth motherfuckaz! That part in the song right before the chorus that goes “What I wanna know (bzzzzzchainsaw), what I wanna know (bizzzzzzzzzzz), what I wanna know (rrrriiiiiizzzzzzzzzz), what I wanna know izzzzzzzz OhOh Oh are you the one-uh-un!!!” Then the chorus dropped. Literally every single person got did in the ass right then. It was kinda like *this*.

The seizure-inducing light show was going crazy. My People also brought the pain. Looking back over the notes I randomly punched into my iPhone throughout the night (which are pretty hilarious on their own as (1) a record of my loss of motor skills and (2) as evidence of what I thought would be a good way to bring a modicum (\ˈmä-di-kəm also ˈmō-\) of veracity (I know yall know this one!) to this review) all I wrote about My People was the following, “My People…are they?” I ask the hard questions. Down Down Down was also triumphant.

Then brief intermission. Went to the upper deck to say whuddup?! to some friends. Reloaded with a double vodka rocks. My drunkenness was perfectly in sync with the energy (synergy anyone?) in Webster and both were showing no signs of stopping. Got back downstairs and pushed to about 15 ft back from the front with my friends Egbert and Noah who are total ladyslayers just in time for Cut Copy. People around were kinda pissed because the floor was packed tight and we were just like “um, which way to the boom boom room?” It wasn’t long though until everyone was hand-holding, “fuck yeah”-ing, “best concert ever”-ing, and high-fiving-to-the-beat. The set was a good mix of songs from their first album Bright Like Neon Love from 2004 and their 2008-released In Ghost Colours. About three songs into the set my “probability of vomiting at some point in the night” level was elevated from “questionable” to “likely” which is undoubtedly a good thing. I can tell you definitively and intractably that it was the best NYC dance party I’ve ever been to, save for maybe Girl Talk at Studio B in 2006. Definitely topped Justice/Midnight Juggernauts at Terminal 5 last fall. So awesome!!! It was a big, bouncy, life-affirming, mosh pit.

Highlight songs were Saturday, That Was Just a Dream, Far Away, Feel the Love, Out There on Ice, So Haunted, of course Lights and Music and their encore and greatest song ever written Hearts on Fire. I’m pretty sure I crouched down and cried at one point, maybe two. Unlike a band whose name I wont mention but whose name starts with an M and ends with GMT who played at McCarren Pool in August and who decided to open their encore with a thirty-minute jam session where they sounded more like Phish than like themselves before playing a half-assed one minute version of their hit song Kids leaving everyone tired and over it- Cut Copy’s encore was the effing truth. They didn’t decide to shit, shower, and masturbate before coming back onstage. They came back out quickly and played Hearts on Fire like it fucking sounds on the album only louder, and then bounced. Then everyone in the audience came back to my place where Daft Punk was Dj’ing. So in conclusion, the Presets + Cut Copy = hot and the best thing about LCD Soundsystem is their song titles. Zing!

And, oh yeah, thank you to Kordan, the Presets, and Cut Copy!!!! Come back soon!!!