oscillations.
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Post by oscillations. on Dec 5, 2006 13:19:40 GMT -5
LCD Soundsystem will be following up their landmark 2005 debut with Sound of Silver on March 20th, 2007. The album has leaked; you can can d/l some of the tracks here. As you may know, they also recently did the 45:33 iTunes-only album for Nike. This, along with Jarvis Cocker's stateside debut & Bloc Party's new album, is one of my most anticipated new releases of the first quarter of 2007. (Lily Allen, too, but I already have her album. )
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spooky21
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Post by spooky21 on Dec 5, 2006 13:44:47 GMT -5
I thought LCD was only one guy? I loved the first album. Just spun a few of the songs in the gym yesterday.
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oscillations.
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Post by oscillations. on Dec 5, 2006 13:50:07 GMT -5
It is, technically. James Murphy.
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oscillations.
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Post by oscillations. on Dec 5, 2006 19:40:31 GMT -5
Listening to some of these tracks, I think it's fair to say James has moved on from the "dance-punk" label haphazardly applied to his earlier work. This new material is a lot simpler...almost a movement in the direction of minimal techno. It's probably going to turn off some of the rock fans that they picked up with songs like "Give It Up", but I think the electro-leaning community will find the new album really satisfying. I like it.
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msanoja
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Post by msanoja on Dec 5, 2006 20:45:13 GMT -5
I loved his debut. Can't wait to hear what he's got up his sleeve this time.
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MusicJunkie
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Post by MusicJunkie on Dec 5, 2006 20:50:14 GMT -5
I'm not too familiar with his music since I've only heard the debut maybe once or twice, but I remember enjoying it a lot. I loved "Tribulations" though. Looking forward to this sophomore effort. :)
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Post by joker on Dec 5, 2006 21:16:48 GMT -5
I loved his debut. Can't wait to hear what he's got up his sleeve this time.
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Post by jaxxalude on Jan 24, 2007 15:35:45 GMT -5
NMELCD Soundsystem hope for Number OneJames Murphy urges fans to get album to pole positionLCD Soundsystem's mainamn James Murphy has urged fans to help get the band's new album 'Sound Of Silver' to the Number One position. In a posting on the website dfarecords.co.uk Murphy wrote that if all the people who bought the first LCD Soundsystem album bought 'Sound Of Silver' on the week of its release it would sell more than the current Billboard Number One album - the soundtrack to the Beyonce film 'Dreamgirls'. He wrote: " 'Dreamgirls' was the Number One record in the US with Billboard scan of 60,064 sold this week. " 'LCD Record 1' (the old record, from 2005) has sold a total of 60,559 in the US since it was released. "Meaning, straight up, if everyone who bought the first record bought 'S.O.S' when its released then we're totally Number One. "Anyway, it's a dream, and I'll be able to move on to my other life as a mailman after that, because it would be all downhill from there for me." 'Sound Of Silver' is set to be released on March 13 in the US, and a day before in the UK. ============================//================================ You heard the man. Buy two or three copies if necessary!
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oscillations.
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Post by oscillations. on Jan 25, 2007 12:16:29 GMT -5
I changed the title. What makes this even better is the fact that I know he is only half-joking. And I would try to do the same thing. But damn, only 60k copies sold of the debut? I always considered them one of the more mainstream acts I listen to!
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spooky21
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Post by spooky21 on Jan 25, 2007 12:19:59 GMT -5
Unfortunately for him, sales are moving up to the 100K range this week. : (
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oscillations.
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Post by oscillations. on Jan 25, 2007 12:36:35 GMT -5
He still could probably get Top 5, though. (If the plan works).
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Post by jaxxalude on Jan 27, 2007 14:27:56 GMT -5
Just to say that I was just listening to "North American Scum" here on the public radio station (or Portugal's equivalent to BBC - Radio 1). And, whaddaya know, this shit sounds like a million bucks coming on the radio! If I know the current PD/MD's politics, it won't be too late until this is added to the regular playlist (I was listening to it on one of the not-so-few freeform slots they have).
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Post by roccorivers on Jan 27, 2007 14:50:18 GMT -5
north american scum has been played quite heavily over here in the uk on zane lowe's show since before xmas. if given the push i could see it crossover and chart really well on mainstream
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Post by jaxxalude on Jan 27, 2007 14:54:29 GMT -5
If you're listening to Radio 1 now, you're listening to Judge Jules. With people like him, who said candy-ravers were dead?!
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Post by jaxxalude on Feb 12, 2007 16:07:31 GMT -5
LCD Soundsystem looks for Silver lining. Where? Right here!
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Post by jaxxalude on Feb 13, 2007 17:19:49 GMT -5
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Post by jaxxalude on Feb 19, 2007 20:51:07 GMT -5
You could always do worse things than to check out this very interesting LCD Soundsystem feature at FACT Magazine.
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msanoja
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Post by msanoja on Feb 20, 2007 14:26:54 GMT -5
North American Scum is a great song. I can't wait!!
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Post by jaxxalude on Mar 6, 2007 18:04:39 GMT -5
UNCUTLCD SOUNDSYSTEM SOUND OF SILVER(DFA/EMI)Murphy’s law: the King of New York’s second classic albumFor the past few years, James Murphy has been making dance music for people who thought they were a bit too old to like that sort of thing, and hedonistic pop for chinstroking rock fans with very good record collections. On this, his second tremendous album as LCD Soundsystem, there is a telling moment nearly three minutes into a song called “All My Friends”. “All My Friends” sounds roughly how the early New Order might have, had Steve Reich joined instead of Gillian Gilbert. Murphy is singing affectionately about hanging out with friends and staying up late, while simultaneously being aware that, at 36, he is neither physically nor spiritually capable of losing the plot very often. “We set the controls for the heart of the sun,” he notes, ever the wistful vinyl nerd, “one of the ways that we show our age.” The reference may be baffling to some of Murphy’s younger fans: after all, this is the man who, as half of New York’s DFA production team, kickstarted a discopunk revival that has reached an apotheosis of sorts with the Klaxons and nu-rave. But to an older – and perhaps more anal – generation, LCD Soundsystem’s records effectively legitimise their enduring obsession with music. Sound Of Silver is partly about this undying fannishness, and partly about being on the road for three years (typical of Murphy’s self-aware wit, its working title was Oh Vanity, Thy Name Is Sophomore Effort). It is also about the strangeness and freedom that doing these things in your mid-thirties brings. On the title track, Murphy adopts a Phil Oakey baritone over skittering, luxuriant techno, and pronounces, “Sound of silver makes you want to act like a teenager, until you remember the feelings of a real-life emotional teenager. Then you think again.” Rarely has anyone making such exciting and fashionable music been so unapologetic about being mature, too. At times, in fact, the suspicion arises that LCD Soundsystem have been constructed entirely to titillate music journalists of a certain age. Sound Of Silver makes you feel very satisfied with yourself as you parse its content: from the Berlin Bowie/Kraftwerk/Tom Tom Club hybrid of the opening “Get Innocuous”, through to the “Rock’n’Roll Suicide” coda of “New York I Love You”. But Murphy’s talent is to proudly flaunt his influences, and to mix them up with belligerence, an exhilarating grasp of rock and dance dynamics, and a powerfully snarky sense of humour. Sat on his tourbus with a persistent blocked nose, Murphy longs for his friends and his hometown of New York. Often, this translates into trenchant, guyish satire: on “North American Scum” (some Neu!, some Fall, some Liquid Liquid, some Talking Heads), he combats the assumption that all of his countrymen are Bush-loving dolts. New York, he explains, is the only place in the States where the Christians are kept off the streets. Europe, on the other hand, is “where the buildings are old and you might have lots of mimes.” The moral, though Murphy is not an obvious moral arbiter, is that stereotyping is a mug’s game. Since the release of LCD Soundsystem’s debut single in 2002, a list of rock snob touchstones called “Losing My Edge”, he has been stereotyped himself - as some kind of grouchy paragon of cool. Sound Of Silver, however, reveals Murphy to be something much better: a complex and self-deprecating character who is confident enough to act his age, betray his influences and take the piss out of everyone who has ever liked his records. Youth is wasted on the young; don’t let this exceptional album be wasted on the hip. JOHN MULVEY
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Post by jaxxalude on Mar 8, 2007 18:24:23 GMT -5
BBC COLLECTIVElcd soundystemsound of silver(emi) Precious metal.Having described the first LCD Soundsystem album as “beige, woody and earthy”, James Murphy said he wanted its follow-up to sound silver. One foil-covered studio later and we have a contender for 2007’s most exciting LP. Less a reinvention of the Murphy and Goldsworthy sound than its thrilling consolidation, Sound Of Silver throws Bowie-esque shapes over rattling percussion, splintered guitars and mutated Moroder basslines. From the sparingly deployed Italo-house piano chords of the title track to All My Friends’ pitch-perfect fusion of euphoria and sorrow, this is music that hits the head, heart and hips all at once. Chris Power 08 March 07
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Post by jaxxalude on Mar 11, 2007 16:09:26 GMT -5
THIS IS FAKE DIYLCD Soundsystem - Sound Of SilverArtist: LCD Soundsystem Release Date: 12/03/07 Label: DFA/EMI Rating: We sometimes wish James Murphy was our uncle. He'd do really amazing things like let us visit him on tour, send us cool records through the post, let us have a go 'on the decks' and he might even let us touch his beard once in a while. We'd also be able to boast that we were related to someone who made easily THE BEST ALBUM OF 2007 (so far). From the man who made guitar-fused dance music cool again in the 2000s and ensured every city on earth had a club that now plays genres like 'mutant disco' comes a record that not only builds on 2005's superb debut but blows it out of the water. Where its predecessor fuzzed and spewed its filthy beat-punk through booming club speakers across the globe, 'Sound Of Silver' distills the melody, energy and excitement of the debut into smooth electro-disco - a little more grown up but no less danceable. To die-hard hipsters it sounds like it'd be fucking rubbish, but it's the most thrilling step forward any artist's managed to make in the past year. Last year's '45:33' track, recorded for Nike, hinted at what was to come on this record - it lacked the lo-fi urgency of Murphy's previous work, instead replaced by a twisting, morphing, lose-yourself whirl, inspired by late 70s disco and the more bizarre side of pop. Which is where 'Sound Of Silver' picks up from - 'Get Innocuous' builds and replicates until it's a throbbing, hypnotic monster, like Paul McKenna let loose on Giorgio Moroder in a Williamsburg bar. 'Time To Get Away' and 'Watch The Tapes' hark back to Murphy's sparse punk roots (with added cowbell, of course), while 'North American Scum' is 'Daft Punk Is Playing At My House's suave older brother, all Casio blips and horrifically funky basslines. Aside from the all-out 'party jams', there's also real moments of introspection and tenderness - 'Someone Great' and 'All My Friends' both tread the line between joy and melancholy, their buzzy soft pop veering between TV On The Radio's warm, enveloping noise and Kraftwerk's clinical synths. The epic funk of 'Us V Them' manages to bleed through to nearly 10 minutes, alongside title track 'Sound Of Silver', whose Bowie-meets- Talking Heads polyrhythmic weirdo-disco piano house is as breathtakingly ambitious as it is catchy. Capping off with 'New York I Love You, But You're Bringing Me Down', a stripped-down ode to NYC's beautiful pitfalls, it's in stark contrast to anything from 2005's debut album and shows just how much Murphy's grown into his potentially tricky 'middle aged' phase. It's also proof at how much of a rare talent he is - managing to balance experimental pop and accessibility without ever getting indulgent. 'Sound Of Silver' is easily one of the most impressive, cohesive albums DIY's heard in a long time, and cements James Murphy's place as a Nile Rogers for the 2000s - one of the greatest producer/songwriters of our generation. A shining Silver triumph. Matt Barnes
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Post by jaxxalude on Mar 11, 2007 16:09:45 GMT -5
INDEPENDENTLCD Soundsystem Sound of Silver, DFA/EMIBy Andy Gill Dance music may still pack out clubs, but the wider influence it wielded has all but evaporated; witness the lengthening silence from such former chart staples as The Chemical Brothers, The Prodigy and Fatboy Slim. Apologists say that dance music isn't really album-fodder anyway, but even in single form, it's trounced these days by Britpop, nu-pop, hip-hop, indie-pop, Keaneplay and R&B. The appeal of cheering on a club DJ simply doesn't transfer that well to the home environment, it seems. This shouldn't be cause for too much gloom. Quite the opposite, in fact, as dance music's great cultural breakthrough - the demystification of the recording process - means that thousands can now make music in their own bedrooms, free to explore outside the strict parameters of club culture. The touchstones for this new form of computer-groove music are not so much Detroit techno icons such as Derrick May and Juan Atkins, but Kraut-rockers like Can, Neu! and Kraftwerk, early synth-rock pioneers such as Silver Apples and Suicide, and minimalist composers like Steve Reich and Terry Riley. James Murphy, who to all intents and purposes is LCD Soundsystem, admitted as much on his single "Losing My Edge", name-checking everyone from Can to Captain Beefheart, going on to notable success with his 2005 debut album. Now Murphy returns with Sound of Silver, a quantum leap beyond LCD's debut. Apart from the closing piano ballad "New York I Love You", the album's nine tracks are methodically built, sometimes from the simplest elements - the single-note bassline of "Time To Get Away", the lone repeated chord of "Get Innocuous", the re-synching pianos of "All My Friends" - laid over the interlocking rhythms. The tone is so discreetly minimal that it's a shock to reach the end of a track and realise that itchy rhythm guitar is now driving the groove, or that a piercing, atonal violin has muscled its way in somewhere. Murphy hasn't yet settled on a vocal style of his own, with individual tracks sounding as though haunted by the spirits of Bowie or Byrne. But his songwriting displays an admirably broad range of subjects: the dubious desire to re-experience teenage emotions; the deceit of "politricks"; the numbing impact of bereavement; and, in "North American Scum", the contrast between American and European attitudes. It makes for a diversely entertaining hour or so, but without that nagging suspicion that you ought to be on a dancefloor. It's possible to discern in Sound of Silver the sound of the future crystallising out of the past. DOWNLOAD THIS: 'Us v Them', 'Time To Get Away', 'North American Scum'
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Post by jaxxalude on Mar 11, 2007 16:10:03 GMT -5
NMELCD SoundsystemSound Of Silver (DFA/EMI)Hey, ever heard the one about the indie band who incorporated a dance direction? Oh, you have? What, like, 1,875,328 times already? This week? Well, you're not the only one. In fact, if NME has to listen to one more person telling us, "Dance music's not dead, it just learnt to play guitar," we might just be forced to gouge out our own eyes with a glowstick. That's not good - as journalists we need our eyes. To watch Deal Or No Deal every day, obviously. Anyway, in 2007 the idea that you're somehow breaking boundaries by sticking some bleeps'n'bongos underneath your rock song is laughable. Bloc Party, The Rapture, Klaxons, Panic! At The Disco, Mystery Jets, Hot Chip, Hadouken!, The Futureheads, Calvin Harris, Late Of The Pier, Radiohead, Metronomy, The Twang, CSS... the list of indie bands who've mixed the rock with the rhythm in recent times is so wide and varied it makes such a declaration virtually meaningless. Yet this wasn't the case at the turn of the century, when a slurry of garage rock bands were so determined to pretend it was still the early '70s that they all stopped washing and caught STDs. In an age where Jet could wear a 'Disco Sucks' badge without getting publicly flogged, James Murphy was pretty close to a musical messiah - a one-man groove machine, helping The Rapture find their funk with his DFA production of 'Echoes', providing Trash (and a billion other indie discos the world over) with 'Losing My Edge', aka The Anthem That Never Tired, and inspiring new rave to gurn like no-one's watching. Yet Murphy's recorded output has always been a confusing one to digest - random singles, a double-album with a disc of reheated tracks, a conceptual jogging opera recorded for Nike... can't the man just put 10 songs on a disc and release it every two years like everyone else? It seems he can - which makes this album rather exciting. By Murphy's own future-thinking standards, it's refinement rather than revolution. The backbone to 'Sound Of Silver' is, like previous LCD material, indebted to the original disco-punk explosion of the late-'70s, from Eno to ESG, while Murphy's delivery suggests he still hasn't discovered the sinus-enhancing benefits of Vick's VapoRub. He's also still acting the record shop über-nerd, pick'n'mixing with such fervour that NME could quite easily fill the word-count here by simply listing all the things the album sounds like ('All My Friends'? That'll be The Chemical Brothers' 'The Golden Path' played out of time on a toy piano, then. 'Sound Of Silver'? Gang Of Four skull-whacked on barbiturates, of course. 'New York, I Love You But You're Bringing Me Down'? Otis Redding reborn as a smart-arse NY hipster, what else? Etc etc). But even by his magpie-like standards, Murphy pushes his luck when opener 'Get Innocuous!' kicks the record off with a bassline nicked from one of his own records. A kind of muted version of 'Losing My Edge', it's delivered with a knowing wink before flavours are slowly added to the pot - a barefaced pinch from Kraftwerk's 'The Robots' here, some Talking Heads-style chanting there. It's this ability to play hop-scotch with genres that keep the surprises coming. The fabulous 'Someone Great' (built around part of his Nike track, '45:33') experiments with acid-fried glockenspiel, 'Watch The Tapes' erupts into Beach Boys-style amusement-park pop, and we're pretty damn sure we heard a slap-bass lurking in there somewhere. Meanwhile, album closer 'New York, I Love You But You're Bringing Me Down' is a firm "f**k you" to those who doubt his songwriting credentials - stripped down piano, Stax horns and an avalanche of guitars that even the Manics might consign to the 'too bombastic' bin. Yet, for all the ideas, this is a record with heart. Be it the sense of mourning that hangs over 'Someone Great', or Murphy realising the reality of ambition on 'All My Friends' ("You spend the first five years trying to get with the plan and the next five years trying to be with your friends again"), there's deeper terrain to be explored here than the pseudo-stoopid dude singing 'North American Scum' likes to let on. Never does any of this attention to detail interfere with the record's main purpose - to make you shake parts of your body you never knew existed. The way Murphy thwacks the cowbell on 'Time To Get Away' is no doubt inspired by some avant-jazz art happening from the outskirts of Kuala Lumpur, but the point is that it sounds great. This is very much a record designed for the dancefloor, rather than your desktop stereo (especially as most tracks head well beyond the five-minute barrier). But whereas Murphy's wise enough never to let his showing off spoil the fun, he can't avoid investing these songs with heart and soul. It's a human affair. And that's what'll keep you hooked long after the beats have worn you out. Tim Jonze
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Post by jaxxalude on Mar 11, 2007 16:10:56 GMT -5
ROLLING STONELCD SoundsystemSound Of SilverRS: 4 of 5 Stars For a future-disco hero, LCD Soundsystem's James Murphy is unusually self-conscious. Before you hear a single kick-drum sample on his excellent second album, Murphy seems to be intentionally setting the bar low, giving the massive, clattering dance-floor killer that opens the disc the awesomely pathetic title of "Get Innocuous." The first LCD track, 2002's "Losing My Edge," was an anthem for aging hipsters everywhere; Silver's first single, "North American Scum," is about the existential crisis of being American at this particular historical moment. Even though it's difficult to imagine Murphy ever exhorting, "Everybody dance now," musically he owes a huge debt to house-music masters like Clivilles and Cole. Putting aside the world-weary Bowie-meets-Byrne vocals, the bulk of the tracks -- "Innocuous," "Us v Them," "Sound of Silver" -- could be lost late-Eighties dance classics. But somehow it all holds together as an album (the New Wave-y tunes "Someone Great" and "All My Friends" help), and by the end, ex-indie-rocker Murphy comes full circle, returning to his roots with the Pavement-meets-Morrissey comic lament "New York I Love You but You're Bringing Me Down." JONATHAN RINGEN
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Post by joker on Mar 12, 2007 13:49:23 GMT -5
Stylus ReviewLCD Soundsystem The Sound of Silver2007 A- If prizes were only ever given for originality in music, James Murphy would be a loser. Reduced to its constituent parts, Sound Of Silver is possibly the most predictable record ever; the first tune is called “Get Innocuous” and is the sound of Bowie meeting Talking Heads in a Detroit warehouse nearly twenty years ago. Or, more precisely, it’s the sound of a reminiscence of that fictional meeting, today, in a loft in Brooklyn. It’s designed to make you strut, and fast. “North American Scum” and “Watch the Tapes” are the same kind of stomp-raves as “Movement” or “Daft Punk Is Playing at My House,” while “Time to Get Away” is minimally funky, repetitive electropop in the vein of “On Repeat” or “Beat Connection.” Indeed, anyone who went for a jog with last year’s 45:33 on their iPod will find several passages of songs here even more familiar than they’d expect. But what elevates LCD Soundsystem beyond being just the greatest tribute band in the world is the consummate love and style with which Murphy exercises his pastiches, and, increasingly on Sound Of Silver, the sheer weight of emotion he manages to manipulate through his surprisingly rich songwriting. Back-to-back at the center of the album are the two best songs Murphy’s ever been involved in: the ruminative, regret-loaded acid-pads of “Someone Great” and the accelerant joie de vivre of “All My Friends.” The former, a meticulously-crafted electro groove with a lyric about a necessarily unidentified personal loss, carries an unexpectedly profound sadness. Thankfully it’s countered by the latter, where excitable pianos and an incessant Krautrock groove build a rose-tinted but realistic reminiscence as a greying hipster looks back on his irreclaimable youth and decides against regret. No one else working this sonic territory has anywhere near this emotional depth. By the time the title track rolls around, its bizarrely cheesy lyrics manage to document the emotional arc of the album: “Sound of silver talks to you / Makes you want to feel like a teenager / Until you remember the feelings of / A real, live, emotional teenager / Then you think again.” So good is it, in fact, that we can even forgive the over-earnest geographical love-song “New York, I Love You But You're Bringing Me Down” that closes the record in a flurry of guitars and plangent pianos. Sound Of Silver harnesses the dance dynamic of LCD’s early singles and strengthens the songwriting impulse Murphy explored on their first album. Yes, of course, it’s a total homage to his favorite music—but it’s an extraordinarily moving one, both emotionally and physically.
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Post by jaxxalude on Mar 12, 2007 17:56:17 GMT -5
COKEMACHINE GLOWLCD SoundsystemSound of Silver(DFA; 2007) Rating: 56% Combined Rating: N/A When “Losing My Edge” finally climaxes into James Murphy’s soliloquyal duet, a list of groups that reads like a guide to the hipster canon, it’s difficult to tell if it’s a natural continuation of the caricature the song is spearing or if at that point Murphy is speaking as himself, spitting back into the face of every elitist snob the sum of his own musical knowledge. If the former, then irony supposedly once again excuses Murphy’s excesses and willingness to parody others. The latter, then he’s every bit the hipster he tries to take down a notch. Even if Murphy is more self-aware than his songs generally imply and his sarcasm is so total as to include himself, the muddiness of his satire is once again a central problem to this, his sophomore album under the LCD Soundsystem moniker, Sound of Silver. The album ends up somewhere between the best of the world of DJing and the world of traditional songwriting. Torn between being the faceless DJ obscured by the sampled voices of ‘legitimate songwriters’ and being the songwriter himself, often the best Murphy can muster is emulation or, at his worst, cynical, empty sarcasm. At some point endless irony should no longer be a stand-in for substance, and Murphy is also still writing from a personal enough place that he keeps LCD from the appeal of his DFA remixes, which are ‘only’ supposed to be fun to dance to. Sometimes it seems like Murphy is writing lyrics with the same mentality as Vice Magazine does its Dos and Don’ts: free to perpetuate whatever tasteless, hypocritical, arbitrary judgments they like so long as they’re appended with a wink. Mimicking and mocking and rolling eyes at both sides of any debate, The Sound of Silver is the neo-disco equivalent of Team America: World Police, thinking itself above having a stance but still content to poke fingers at those who do. It’s entertaining, sure, but also empty and a bit soulless. Like first single “North American Scum,” which treads where only Ted Leo’s “Ballad of the Sin Eater” once dared: while traveling abroad (read: Europe), the hated American awakens to his reviled status. Murphy sings, “We’ve been on trains and on planes ‘till we think we might die / far from North America / where the buildings are old and you might have lots of mimes.” He’s either being ironic or writing in the voice of the blockheaded American stereotype he’s had thrust upon him, or he’s unintentionally justifying with his glib dismissal every prejudice he encounters, but none of those three songwriting scenarios excuse the line or help it make sense. And, besides, Murphy isn’t from North America, he’s from New York City. That’s a distinction worth making. In the absence of any real overarching subject, Sound of Silver becomes the soundtrack to a self-legitimizing lifestyle; Murphy has ostensibly penned an album about what it’s like being in LCD Soundsystem and living in New York. It’s not entirely “wtf” to suggest that had Trent Reznor spent his peak songwriting years in New York, he might be giving Murphy a run for his money on the club circuit, and that had Murphy grown up in Mercer, Pennsylvania (Smalltown, USA), he might be the reigning king of goth. Impeccable production, rhythm-based pop structures, an anal-retentive attention to instrumentation, and a self-encapsulated scene drive both Murphy and Reznor to provide, again and again, two-dimensional representations of themselves rather than portraits with depth or broader accessibility. The great DFA remix of “The Hand That Feeds” provides further evidence of their unlikely but seamless compatibility; Sound of Silver confirms that LCD is NIN for the In Crowd. That Murphy is essentially his own source material makes the album a strangely redundant listen. “Get Innocuous” opens with a solo beat that eerily mirrors the solo opening beat of “Losing My Edge,” LCD’s most recognizable song. Line up “Time to Get Away” against last album’s “Disco Infiltrator,” each featuring Murphy’s peaking falsetto over minimalist, punctuating bass accents, and they come from the same place. “Watch the Tapes,” like former single “Give It Up,” proves that Murphy has the producing acumen to make muted guitar scratches central to a song, but its reoccurrence can’t reproduce its novelty. Undoubtedly the best fourteen straight minutes on the album is the infectious and highly listenable one-two punch of “Someone Great,” about losing a friend, and “All My Friends,” about finding old friends again. The former was previewed as a part of Murphy’s 45:33, the Nike-requisitioned jogging companion, but is better here with its own borders rather than lending its click and groove to what was largely a context-specific oddity. But “All My Friends,” simply put, will probably be considered one of the best songs of 2007 come list time. Part War-era U2 or New Order circa Power, Corruption & Lies (both 1983), a single piano phrase is repeated for the song’s entire seven plus minutes while two chords are cycled on bass and guitar creeps into the mix. It’s a great display of patience that matches its tonal inexorability to Murphy’s retrospective observations on a life of rejuvenated adolescence. He follows the song’s central idea -- “You spend the first five years trying to get with the plan / and the next five years trying to be with your friends again” -- with the album’s best line: “I wouldn’t trade one stupid decision for another five years of life.” Where the line finally makes good on Murphy’s formula of uncomplicated and sincere self-portraiture, the song itself is also one of the few instances in which Sound of Silver doesn’t sound like it was culled from leftovers of the last album. While Sound of Silver doesn’t try or particularly want to distinguish between itself and 2005’s self-titled debut, it also rarely repeats that album’s sing-along crescendos. Murphy still displays an ear for melody, uncannily shaping his everyman voice into appealing and memorable sequences, but save for the refrain from “Us V. Them,” the album never approaches the heights of “On Repeat” or “Movement,” let alone the adrenaline rush of early single “Beat Connection.” From the stratospheric high of “All My Friends” and “Us V. Them,” the album then crashes to the ground. I’m still tempted to join the party, to take whatever pills are handed me with a plastic cup of beer and turn a blind eye to all the easy fallacies, but as the album closes, Murphy provides his own warnings as to why I shouldn’t. On the title track he points out what most of us knew all along, that the ‘sound of silver’ “makes you want to feel like a teenager / until you remember the feelings of / a real live emotional teenager / then you think again.” The faux-piano lounge comedown of “New York I Love You But You’re Bringing Me Down” laments the Disneyfication of New York in which its more dangerous, exciting qualities are banished and its perpetual teenagers are reduced, “like a rat in a cage / pulling minimum wage.” As with all of LCD Soundsystem’s dance club morality, the worst-case scenario is being bummed out. No one ever got popular singing songs about how we all have to grow up sometime; here, 37 year-old Murphy realizes that being a teenager isn’t as fun as he remembered. That’s more than a little bit sad, especially when it might have been eschewed in favor of the utopist’s never-ending party, which is just more fun, if equally myopic. Sound of Silver might want to start the party, but it ends up the cold, hard look in the mirror the morning after. Conrad Amenta
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Post by busyboy on Mar 14, 2007 7:50:30 GMT -5
I'm really feeling this, "Get Innocuous" is my favourite so far. I'm definitely getting this next Friday.
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oscillations.
Diamond Member
Opinion = Fact
I was faced with a choice at a difficult age.
Joined: February 2005
Posts: 10,130
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Post by oscillations. on Mar 14, 2007 12:10:09 GMT -5
Let's get it to the top!
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Post by busyboy on Mar 14, 2007 15:15:49 GMT -5
Unfortunately my purchase will count towards the Swiss album chart, but I so wish Soundscan could track it anyway... ;)
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Post by jaxxalude on Mar 15, 2007 18:37:20 GMT -5
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