Shut Up and Play the Hits, or: Pretension! Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah-yeah, yeah-yeah, yeah...yeah, yeah-yeah, yeah-yeah, yeah...

Shut Up and Play the Hits (2012)

Directed by Will Lovelace and Dylan Southern

***SPOILERS***

I’m sick of music documentaries. Of all the genres and film facets I thought I’d have to deal with—and this includes Italian neorealism, extremely violent war epics, and torture porn—I was least prepared/excited for music documentaries. As a lover of music, and as somebody whose life has been greatly affected by music, the prospect of judging a film about a band I love doesn’t exactly excite me. But up until this point, I’ve examined films that center on bands and artists I’m not enamored with: Paul Simon (Under African Skies), Bob Marley (Marley), and Sigur Rós (Inni). And in all three cases, there’s just been something holding them back. For Under African Skies, it was director Joe Berlinger’s biased attentiveness to Paul Simon’s whining; in Inni, it was Vincent Morisset’s misguided effort to paint Sigur Rós as untouchable gods of rock music; in Marley, it was director Kevin Macdonald’s inability to breathe life into Bob Marley’s well-documented history. To sum all three of these films up: I don’t feel the essence of the band I’m watching. It’s magical to watch Paul Simon making Graceland in the recording studio, but the incessant berating of his critics became the focal point. And I believe Sigur Rós’ music is as beautiful as humanly possible, buuuuuut the one-note experience of Inni eventually wears off and I’m left with a band I know nothing about. I’m starting to think: will a music documentary ever satisfy me?

After watching Shut Up and Play the Hits, that question remains in the air. For the life of me, I’ll never understand the light touch directors have on music documentaries. Is the structure of alternating between tidbits about the band and a particular live concert too constricting? If I’ve noticed anything about the aforementioned documentaries, it’s that they’re too consistent, bordering on the edge of tedium that benefits from a shorter running time. Themes, of course, are important, and Berlinger, Morisset, and Macdonald can all be credited for being entirely committed to their band/artist and focused on a specific idea. But after witnessing directors Will Lovelace and Dylan Southern’s Shut Up and Play the Hits, I’ve realized one thing: as incredible as Bob Marley, Paul Simon, and Sigur Rós are, even they cannot breathe life into a story like a director can.

All of the magical moments of Marley, Under African Skies, and Inni all came from the bands. And while this remains to be true for LCD Soundsystem in Shut Up and Play the Hits, Lovelace and Southern are so in tune with and intimately involved in front man James Murphy’s consequential decision to retire his band that their film has a texture unlike any of the aforementioned films.  And that theme? Pretension. Of all the fucking themes to explore regarding one of indie music’s biggest acts, Lovelace and Southern chose fucking pretension. But if you’re going to establish such a theme, you better go all out and pursue it. Not only do Lovelace and Southern do just that, but the balancing act performed by the duo is much more in tune with their subject than any of the other directors mentioned could achieve.

One thing really quick: fuck Simon Abrams’ review of Shut Up and Play the Hits for Slant magazine. He berates the film for the most mundane reasons possible, noting, “Since we know Murphy isn't retiring from making music, it's difficult to mourn the end of LCD Soundsystem,” and how Chuck Klosterman’s interview with Murphy in the film is “nigh insufferable because unpolished interviews are never good substitutes for ones that have been transcribed and cleaned-up.” Abrams clearly owns knowledge of LCD Soundsystem’s history, apparent from the line, “He may sing, ‘All I want is your pity,’ in ‘All I Want,’ but that sentiment isn't what LCD Soundsystem deserves to be remembered for.” So sure, he’s slapped on the headphones and dabbled in Murphy’s tunes, but I honestly have to wonder how much Abrams cares for the band. Not that I think you should care deeply for a band in order to judge their film—I’ve done it three times now, as mentioned before—but such an accusatory line is understandably taken with a  grain of salt by a gigantic LCD Soundsytem fan: me.

I always liked LCD Soundsystem, but I never truly understood the band until I saw them live in concert. My god, doesn’t that just sound pretentious? Anyway, no matter how many signs are given within the music, nothing can beat the spectacle of witnessing a band working together, interacting with the crowd, and allowing their true personalities to shine on stage. And ahhhhhhh fuck me, if the most endearing and noteworthy aspect of LCD Soundsystem isn’t the fact that they’re a bunch of regular dudes making kick-ass music, I don’t know what is. And if that sentiment isn’t all the more apparent when watching them perform live, then erase my iTunes library, revoke my Spotify account, and never allow me to download another song as long as I live.

And killing everything is the attitude regarding pretension surrounding indie music. It’s too weird; it’s boring; it’s not fucking Katy Perry. The level of generalization will make your head spin if your personality and religious beliefs have been practically fucking shaped by indie music. And not because it’s indie, but because, let’s face it, nobody will be making movies about Maroon 5 fifty years from now, and nobody’s life will be changed by an Adam Levine quote. All in all: indie music is just too pretentious because it cares too much.

Well you know what: maybe it is. Maybe it’s all just exaggerated “feel sorry for me!” art that is too grandiloquent for its own good. Too self-consumed. Just fucking pompous. Lovelace and Southern alternate between shots of Klusterman’s interview with Murphy, LCD Soundsystem’s final show, and the menial tasks of Murphy’s day after the show. The juxtaposition between the final show and the good-god-you’ve-got-to-be-kidding-me amount of pretension surrounding Klusterman’s vague questions and Murhpy’s conversations with his dog is both daunting and electrifying, if only for the fact that pretension and music may collide for LCD Soundsystem, but their embrace of pretension is so glorious that it becomes fucking liberating.

And I could write all day about how Lovelace and Southern construct their tale in such a manner, trying to eloquently depict how they're able to balance such a level of pretension with a concert that is nothing but loving and, dare I say it, just about having fun. So fuck it all:

I see a man answering insanely idiotic questions from Klusterman.

I see a man walking his dog, dressed in a peacoat and plaid pajama pants.

I see a man wearing an all-white suit while being interviewed by Stephen Colbert.

I hear a man say to his fans, “If this is a funeral, let's make it the best funeral ever.”

The looks, the judgments, the critiques, the adoration from his fans.

Boring, masterful, forgettable, legendary.

PRETENTIOUS.

Then I see the man dealing with it all, breaking down on the floor, surrounded by the instruments that flood his life, running his tear ducts dry.

A realization I (and Murphy) had yet to truly understand: it’s over.

So to all the fans, critics, Simon Abrams of the world—and even myself—let’s all do LCD Soundsystem a solid:

Shut the fuck up and enjoy the hits.