Review: LCD Soundsytem – This Is Happening
LCD Soundsystem – This Is Happening (2010) [DFA] // Grade: B+
He’s not exactly a curmudgeon, but James Murphy sometimes feels fatherly in a way that belies his actual age: the acerbic armchair adviser boozily dosing out theories on life, love, business. For instance: Hits are problematic. Love is worth changing for. And your reality? Probably not so real.
Not that any of this is news. Murphy’s been dispensing with the armchair wisdom (and generational in-jokes) since day one, needling away incessantly at the very youth empire DFA’s helped sustain. And as much as we’d like to eulogize the great LCD Soundsystem catalogue—this third album is reported to be its last—the truth is that very little has actually happened on This Is Happening. Murphy takes some jabs at the industry (“You Wanted A Hit”), laments love’s inability to cure all (“I Can Change”) and apes Bowie in the best, and most endearing, ways possible (“Pow Pow”, “All I Want”). Don’t take so-so first single “Drunk Girls” as a sign of any grand misstep. The album as a whole is shiny, solid, fun as hell. Classically Murphy.
And there’s a lot to be said for stasis, especially when the man in question is responsible for some of last decade’s most adored and irresistible tracks. The miniature shifts on Happening—how Murphy seems to be talking to himself more than anything and trills with this enveloping warmth he’s only suggested before—are enough to make the thing feel propulsive without ever once sacrificing what makes LCD Soundsystem so great in the first place: It is, if you need it to be, some of the easiest music to love. Catchy, danceable, witty; perfectly produced and spastic—like sugar soda, all caffeinated and fizzy. But it’s also incredibly resonant, if you’d rather it be that instead. Murphy’s fatherly wisdom—the crack in his shimmering apathy—is both warning and reassurance, a hand reaching from beyond the culture that adores him: There’s more to this than a disco beat. But if you need life to be the beat, and the beat alone, he’s be there for that too.
May 17th, 2010 at 11:16 am
I love this album. For me, ‘You Wanted a Hit’ and ‘Pow Pow’ are the head-and-shoulders standouts…they’re just so warts-and-all-honest. And I love that about him. And his music.
I’m not even just talking about the lyrics…the production is just so clear and up-front that you can hear what sounds like mistakes. But then you remember it’s Murphy, and that any ‘mistake’ you hear was put there on purpose.
As always, perfect writeup. I probably woulda gone to A-, but, well, that’s not what I do.