justice are The New York Dolls to Daft Punk’s Rolling Stones – brilliantly thieving acolytes whose giddily primitivist steez reminds you of what made their increasingly-baroque role models great in the first place.
This set is Justice’s third live LP, sorta — it’s essentially a studio remake of their current live set. Some songs are radically altered, others less so: their signature house banger “D.A.N.C.E” (66+ million streams on Spotify at last count) appears twice, in a teased-out disco version and a blow-out mash-up finale with Woman’s “Safe + Sound” and “Fire.” Meanwhile, “Phantom,” from their cross-icon-titled debut, gets grafted vocals from Simian’s “Never Be Alone” (which Justice remixed into a breakout 2006 hit). And things really hit cruising altitude on the triptych of “Pleasure” (a serrated synth shredding the original’s satin glitz), “Heavy Metal” (the title referring less to Black Sabbath than Wendy Carlos’ massive Switched-On Bach Moog rig), and “Stress” (as ever, pure 2 A.M. dancefloor skull-fuckery).
Overall, Woman Worldwide improves the songs from Woman – Justice’s own ascent/descent into the disco baroque — and does, erm, justice to the rest of their catalog. Is it necessary to revisit this stuff? Depends on what you mean by necessary. I mean, the Grateful Dead are still releasing live shows, and they don’t even exist anymore.
