LCD Soundsystem

I fucking love LCD Soundsystem. I'm just putting that out there. My dad can't stand them. My roommate complains about me playing my "shitty" music whenever I put them on in the car. I can't really find many people I know at all that like them, let alone as much as I do. I don't understand it. There's nothing particularly offensive about their sound. It's punk- and disco-inflected dance music -- without the over-aggressiveness of some strains of punk, and borrowing from disco influences in an almost pretentious fashion (I'm not even joking: they literally have a song called "Yeah [Pretentious Version]").

LCD Soundsystem - Tribulations

Band front-man/lead singer/DFA Records boss James Murphy is the essential cog to LCD Soundsystem, with his matter-of-fact delivery and stunning knack for turning what are seemingly monotonous subject matters and beats into minutes-long opuses on life and death and everything in between. Obviously, he crystallized the latter pinpoint-perfectly on top-ten-track-of-the-last-10-years "All My Friends," but the guy's been doing it with his cohorts in LCD Soundsystem for years in one way or another. Their 2007 album Sound Of Silver is also widely considered one of the best of the last decade, and it's certainly among my favorite albums ever. Recently though, I've been listening to their first release, a double CD simply titled LCD Soundsystem, a compilation amassing one disc of earlier singles, and a second disc of then-new for 2005 material.

Both are certainly great CD's on their own, and could easily have their own glowing reviews from me, but for some reason, I tend to favour the disc of their older material. There's no great discrepancy between any of their three discs really: 90% party-ready jams, and 10% slower numbers that cover everything from how shitty New York got in the last decade, to the heart-aching departure of someone you really love -- all corkscrewing their way into your psyche in seven- to eight-minute cuts.

LCD Soundsystem - On Repeat

Maybe that's the one thing about LCD Soundsystem that makes them a hard band to get into and appreciate: the formidable length and structure of their music. The elements themselves are fine, and rarely stray from the usual dance-floor fare: hi-hats, drum machines, atmospherics, crunchy guitar, and (God love James Murphy) more cowbells than are probably a good idea. Either way, the manner in which all of those culminate is truly something to marvel at, if you really take the time (quite literally) to do it. There's one Sound Of Silver track - "Get Innocuous" - that for about 30 seconds, takes a fast-paced kind of "banging on alien steel" sound, and transforms it bar-by-bar into an equally quick but simple ticking noise. I mean it's intricacies like that that I really appreciate about these guys, but that may go unnoticed or just plain ignored.

But getting back to it, it really might be that musically density that forms a wall between eager ears and musical minds. When even the above-mentioned "All My Friends" spends its whole first minute of seven repeating the same piano loop over and over again (the source of my father's frustration with the group), I may start to understand some people's hesitance at getting into LCD Soundsystem. Begrudgingly, I'll even admit that James Murphy's voice is - realistically - not the most pleasing thing to listen to for the three hours of their music I have in my iTunes.

LCD Soundsystem - Great Release

But it's not always so much how he's saying what it is -- it's without a doubt what it is he's actually talking about. And it really is more like talking than singing. I can barely think of any lines he actually rhymes with proficiency, and it seems like most of his lyrics are stream-of-consciousness verbal assaults on ageing and friends and socializing and love and getting fucked over and music and what's cool and what's not. And all of it is endlessly quotable. For me, James Murphy is nothing short of a modern philosopher. In reference to above quotability, I could write an entire post on the genius musings contained in LCD Soundsystem's tracks, but the best way to pick them out is to actually give the tunes a listen.

This is possibly the best analogy I have for LCD Soundsystem's music: Remember "The Sunscreen Song"? Sadly, not as many people as I thought do, and its lyrical content and origin are an entirely different story, but if you imagine Baz Luhrmann in that song is some kind of fatherly figure doling out advice to you on your graduation day, James Murphy is like your best friend yelling life advice over the dance grooves at a house party. And when you really think about it, it's as simple as that.

Buy LCD Soundsystem here: Amazon