LCD Soundsystem

Even though it's highly unlikely that anyone will ever get to witness a true LCD Soundsystem show any time soon, they are one of the very best live acts I've ever had the privilege to experience. An LCD live show is unbeatable and visceral.

What do I like about LCD Soundsystem? I like that they created their own sound out of the sounds that came before them, paying homage to the material from which they borrow while creating something that will one day get an homage of its own.

I like them because they put on a live show that I can see five times in a week and never get sick of (true story). I like them because they know what they stand for and make no apologies.

I like them because their music speaks to me in the same way that the music of The Beach Boys and The Doors speaks to me - through songs that are carefully crafted from bass to vocal and everywhere in between, and I know that that care has not gone to waste, because I am there to appreciate it with every listen. I like them because I feel connected to them through their art.

Leslie Feist isn’t really known in Britain for her prodigious touring schedules, so it tends to be the bigger rooms she’s playing when she does make it over; that, in itself, provides the Canadian with a unique problem. A sense of intimacy has long been crucial to her recorded output - particularly on key albums Let It Die and The Reminder - and replicating that in yawning theatres is likelier easier said than done. Not that she makes it look particularly difficult, though; on her last UK jaunt, in support of the criminally-underrated Metals, she put together a terrific live band that included vocal trio Mountain Man. The new tracks - many of which, like ‘Graveyard’, ‘A Commotion’ and ‘Undiscovered First’ - sounded thrillingly huge, thumping percussion providing an anchor for group vocals, but the decision to huddle the extensive live lineup around the centre of the expansive stages proved a masterstroke; when the classics were aired - ‘I Feel It All’, or a reworked version of ‘Mushaboom’ - you felt like you could have been watching them in the back of a bar. So impressively did Feist pull off that delicate balance on her last tour, in fact, that it almost seems a travesty that we don’t get a chance to bear witness to it too often; with any luck, she won’t leave it quite so long before she returns.