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Live Review: The Juan MacLean hit the refresh button on electronic music, at Brighton Music Hall


For one night in Allston last Tuesday, dancing aligned between the groove and bump of some mystical design. One of New York’s brightest lights in modern electronic music, The Juan Maclean, came wrapped up in a perfect box via Fenway Recording Sessions at Brighton Music Hall. The night eased slowly on a little after 8:30 p.m., where DJ Carbo introduced a heady mix of electronica: Fans and audience members alike trickled in to the backdrop of le music.

After a few hours of tone-setting by the DJ, John MacLean, the group’s brainchild and former Six Finger Satellite guitarist, beelined to his avant-garde instrument, the theremin. As his hand waved to and fro, like a punk rock kind of conductor, esoteric sounds erupted from the two antennas. Concertgoers looked on, head’s bobbing, leg’s bending, eyes goggling.

Then came the illustrious Nancy Whang. The former LCD Soundsystem singer and synth player sauntered to her mic clad in all black, with ratted out locks looming from the sides of her head. Her tambourine took front and center. Her vocals dispatched euphoric waves up and down the spine.

As some are aware, The Juan MacLean is out on tour for the first time since 2009, after the devastating death of drummer Jerry Fuchs. In light of the tragedy, the band put on a whole-hearted performance with flumes of noise that take root in 1980’s dance music, all the while looking somewhere far off in the future.

The night featured an eclectic mix of sounds — including a revival of house, new-wave, and disco — with the performance of songs such as “Running Back To You” and “A Simple Design”. The Juan MacLean’s latest album, last fall’s In A Dream, is a refreshing play on electronic music, with tracks that evoke the same energy as the sampled and remixed counterparts of this generation, but with the intrinsic quality of a well-though out composition: Drums, synths, and vocals combined.

On this late Tuesday in April, the DFA Records group made hearts swoon with reverberations of passion and talent. As one member of the audience put it perfectly, “All you need for a good movie is a girl and gun, and all you need for a good band is a girl and synthesizer”.

That much is true for the re-emergence of The Juan Maclean.

Amen.

The Juan MacLean, April 28 @ Brighton Music Hall in Allston