LCD Soundsystem Album: “This Is Happening”

Going through my first listen now. Was dubious about buying this one due to the writings of the musical literates who listed all the influences that this album draws from and claimed it was a bad thing. There's nothing LCD Soundsystem has produced in the past that I didn't appreciate and enjoy. This album is no different.

Rock and roll is just cleaned up blues. Everything's been done and nothing's original. Shakespeare stole, so did Dylan, so did the Stones and the Beatles, as does Scorsese, Tarantino, and even (gasp) David Bowie.

The point is to make the thing you're doing so fun and awesome that no one will have time to complain.

This album is flat out beautiful. Very different mood than the prior releases. Murphy seems to have taken off his armor for this one, trading in irony, humor and up tempo catchphrase tunes for sincerity and haunting melodies.

Oscar Wilde said thst the only reason for a work of art to exist is to be beautiful, and that beauty was useless, in the pragmatic, workaday sense.

This is a useless, beautiful album.

It feels like New York city at night, fat with promise and heartache.

Buy it.

Seeing LCD Soundsystem live at this year's Sasquatch music festival, I realized I thought frontman James Murphy's current touring band is a little like Bruce Springsteen Springsteen fused the rock and r/b and singer-songwriter movement and folk of his recent past and turned them into a band that felt unmistakably thrilling, like a train at full speed taking you somewhere new. Murphy is much older and rounder than Springsteen was when he started, but that sense is there - there are guitars and drums and keyboards, but also drum panels and laptops and little gray boxes I can't identify. You can't quite call Murphy a DJ, even though that's where he started - instead, Murphy has created a band (even though he plays every instrument on the records) that seems to define the capabilities of modern music.

Or, to put it differently: This is happening. That title. How ironic and exciting for an album whose influences seem to fly out of everywhere at once. "I Can Change," the thrilling synth keyboard at its center could have been lifted from the 80s Human League classic "Keep Feeling Fascination;" "All I Want" could be a 90s classic guitar song, even with the bleeps; "Someone's Calling Me" is like a muted, sexy take on Iggy Pop's "Nightclubbing."

But that's not what I think Murphy implies is "happening" with that title (nor are his hipster dance moves, gray hair, and skinny tie of the cover). Instead, that's what's in the lyrics - songs of facing your life and your shortcomings, buried in a great dance groove. That's undoubtedly the nature of "Dance Yrself Clean," a song that literally proposes dancing as a cure for the mentality of the "thirty car pileup" that's become an anxious mentality, and again in its last song "Home": "This is the trick/forget a terrible year," Murphy advises you. Dance Yrself Clean indeed.

The truth is the lyrics are Murphy's secret weapon underneath his already sterling beats. This is where This Is Happening distinguishes itself from the electronica trends of the 90s - though it makes you dance just as much (or more!), Murphy manages to place a revelatory statement of self inside each brilliant song. By the time the what-is-love dance-off "One Touch" segues into the beautiful love song "All I Want," you're already to give yourself over to Murphy equally for a long conversation as you would for a dance party. This Is Happening never stops giving you both.

If things are to be believed, "This is happening" will be the third and final CD by LCD Soundsystem.

At 9 tracks totalling over 65 minutes, almost every song takes its time to weave its spell. The 8 minute long "Dance yrself clean" starts off Lo fi, bursting startlingly into life at about the 3 minute mark with bouncy/buzzing synths. Lead-off single "Drunk girls" is chugging Dance Rock with spoken/chanted/sung lyrics, extremely contagious.

"One touch" is a stomping Sci Fi number with flickering synths (and additional kids vocals), "All I want" is a rocker with a droning riff, while "I can change" is a shimmery synth-driven animal.

My absolute favourite is "You wanted a hit" which gradually builds layer upon layer to a simply brilliant Pop/Rock number with pulsing synths (and an instrumental break that sounds like a dischordant orchestra). "You wanted the time, but maybe I can't do time, oh we both know that's an awful line, but it doesn't make it wrong" go the wry lyrics in part.

"Pow wow" is a swirling spare groove with narrative-style lyrics. "Somebody's calling me" is the album's lone ballad, and closing is the Disco-tinged "Home" which would sound right at home on a Vampire Weekend album.

I have to confess, the first few times I listened to this, I wasn't too impressed and felt some songs were too long, but this album is a real grower and if it is LCD Soundsystem's swan song, what a wonderful way to go.

Wacky in style and indie darlings for the latter half of the 00s, LCD Soundsystem perfected the genre of dance-punk. Mixing long-form jams and riffs with incredible production values & surprisingly meaningful lyrics, LCD Soundsystem knows what they do, what they do best, and they certainly don't do anything drastic to change it up with this record. If you heart LCD, then you should also heart this album as it provides you everything you like about the band. If you don't like LCD, your mind certainly won't be changed. And if you don't know LCD, well, you might be in for a suprise.

I'll let the music really speak for itself, since it really does require listening to it for yourself, instead of words, but I will say that "All I Want" is the track that stood out to me most, and what LCD crafts is often astounding. It's easy to make these songs 3-4 minutes, but LCD riffs them into 8-9 minute tracks without losing anything, and really building into the atmosphere of each piece.

Overall, no minds will be changed about the band in their supposedly last album, but your love will only be affirmed for them. Is it brilliant? No, but it is a solid effort, and if they truly are leaving, LCD is leaving on a high note, which is all you can ever ask for.

This album has grown on me and i listen to it quite often. Its a bit sad that this will be LCD's last album and they won't be doing anymore shows, because Id buy a ticket for every single one of them. I'll continue to appreciate them and give them my love as a fan while in my car, at home or at a dance club/bar.