All Points East review: Justice put on the show of the summer

If you were a teenage music fan in the UK at the weekend, chances are you would be in either Reading or Leeds for the rite of passage post-GCSE blowout with Lana Del Rey, Fred again.. and more, while dance heads could head to Creamfields or Lost Village, not to mention the small matter of the Notting Hill Carnival.

Also in London, Saturday also hosted boutique new leftfield gem RALLY in Southwark Park and the queer utopia of Body Movements, meaning All Points East – a heavily corporate festival criticised in the past for consistent sound issues – was up against it more than ever to bring bodies through the door.

While the first weekend of the festival – now in its sixth year – catered to a younger audience with headline performances from Kaytranada, Mitski and Loyle Carner, its second three days tries to draw fans away from more groundbreaking events by playing the nostalgia card.

First up on the Friday of the second weekend is LCD Soundsystem, who have somehow managed to play almost entirely the same set for the eight years and counting of their second act as a band and keep it engaging and enthralling.

The New Yorkers defined the alchemy of rock and dance at the turn of the millennium and top a bill of acts that fall on either side of the fence. In the sizeable North Arena tent, Peruvian DJ Sofia Kourtesis overcomes taking a tumble early in her set to delight with groovy highlights from debut album Madres, before Floating Points plays a mesmerising set of otherworldly techno, anchored by the mammoth ‘Birth4000’, one of the best dance tracks of 2023. On the rock side, Pixies remain a reliable and raucous live act (even if their set misses out the irreplaceable ‘Debaser’).

While almost identical to their headline performance here in 2018 in terms of setlist, LCD’s headline set is given a touching and tragic edge when James Murphy tells the crowd of the death of his business partner Justin Chearno. “We’re all fucking destroyed,” Murphy said, with Nancy Whang then singing ‘Someone Great’ through floods of tears. The communal support then showed for the band throughout the rest of the set gave ‘New York, I Love You But You’re Bringing Me Down’, ‘All My Friends’ and more even further gravitas.

Sunday also leant heavily on early ‘00s nostalgia, headlined by a Ben Gibbard double-header of Death Cab for Cutie playing Transatlanticism, before he changed from all-black to all-white and ran through The Postal Service’s giddy, fantastic Give Up for one of the final times (presumably) ever. Before them came fellow Pacific Northwest indie darlings (The Decemberists, Sleater-Kinney) and a newer crop of bands all indebted to Gibbard’s open and frank lyricism (Wednesday, The Lemon Twigs).

Sandwiched in between these two is Field Day, brought under the All Points East umbrella in recent years after a decade of being the must-attend dance event of the summer in the capital. While its early programming was dogged by torrential rain, a double rainbow emerged right on time for Romy’s queer dance party of a live show. As it was at Glastonbury, Primavera and beyond, hers remains the most fun live show of the summer.

If Romy’s show was the most fun of this festival season, then the title of the best full stop has to go to Justice. The French house duo have had a somewhat surprising second wave of relevance and popularity with new album Hyperdrama, and their extraordinary live show deserves to go down in history. Across a tight 70 minutes, Gaspard Augé and Xavier de Rosnay – looking impossibly suave – bring a relentless energy and pulverising sound. Most of the music played here is reworked versions of songs from the band’s back catalogue, turned up to 11 through beefier edits, and it feels like a set of music purpose built for a fully optimised live show, rather than songs from the studio performed on stage.

The vocal hook of recent Tame Impala collaboration ‘Neverender’ worms its way in and out of the set throughout, finally melting together with the timeless ‘D.A.N.C.E.’ at the show’s climax, and there’s a dynamite precision to the set that marks the pair out as absolute masters of the form. A set of throbbing, jubilant noise backed by a subtle but stunning light show, it crowns Justice as the kings of 2024’s summer of live music and marks their unlikely return to the top table of the dance music world.