The Top 30 Albums of 2007: # 3

LCD Soundsystem
Sound Of Silver

LCD Soundsystem.  It's the one that everybody loves?  It's a critical consensus.  Let's talk about it as a mind-warping odyssey of electronic poetry, and allude to it's place in the future's canon of musical classics.  Let's examine it, aesthetically, against the great works of Cervantes, Brahms and Cezanne.  Do I know Cezanne well enough?  Diebenkorn isn't in that class, him I know well.  Monet?  I know Monet.  No connection though, Cervantes has obvious connection.  Brahms, that's a sucker way out, not Brahms.  Like the classical idea though, but there's not enough of a relationship.  Jazz connections are what everybody does.  Too many people write about jazz.  Don't join them. 

Make jokes about each individual song, which will be easy for some because the lyrics are so obvious, and they're easy to remember.  And hear, they're easily memorable lyrics.  You can sing along with this if you want to after hearing it through a few times.  Already sort of did that with Grinderman, should've saved it?  Can't do that twice in a row.  Can't do that ever again?  Wait for another music list.  Another one?  Jokes about "Sound of Silver" are easy, but that's probably the point, all that teen-ager stuff, it's so obvious.  Probably been done.  Ugh.

Nevermind that.  Let's turn it into one of those personal explanations of why the individual reviewing it really "gets" the songs, because of the reviewers proximity to New York City, and find some way to name-drop the people who the reviewer knows that were somewhat involved with James Murphy while he was recording.  Or just imply it.  Just write about New York, write about being bored, wanting to party, learning how to let go.  Sex.  Write about sex and the album.  Focus on the mundane aspects of listening to something that describes a life more interesting than one's own.  That's going to be depressing and too bloggy.  Obvious again.  Maybe just see if he'll let me post those pics of Murphy?  No, that would be gross.  Don't even know why that's coming up.  Not that interesting anyway: drunk and silly doesn't say much.

Wait.  Use Alex Ross The Rest Is Noise, and google, to make it sound like the reviewer really understands how music is made.  Make it seem like we're Sasha Frere-Jones, and can talk about music and how it's constructed, we can talk about 4/4 time, and chord progression, or the difference in key structure, all that stuff, while it's still not talking out of one's ass.  Still, who's that for?  What's the audience for this anyway?  Assumptions: on the fence readers aren't going to care about album reviews of last year unless they're disgusted with taste choice.  Tired of hearing about Person Pitch and how it should of been higher.  It should have been better, than it would be higher.  Better how?  Not as fun as this album.  Tried that with Fishscale last year, never really liked the way it worked.  Coming after likable stuff, good albums, that's impossible to write.  Shouldn't have deleted all the bad albums from hard drive, that might have helped.  No, then we'd have to listen to them again.

Just deal with the "All My Friends" video, and how perfect it is.  Talk about getting chills when the camera dollies back.  That way we can talk about imagery and personal emotions, we know that stuff.  That can work.  Don't watch the video again for a long while, try to maintain that emotional memory without the dilution of repetition.  Probably the only person with that reaction.  That trick has been done before.  Probably by Eisenstein, he did everything first.

No, make somebody else write it, do it like it's the comics interview stuff, where you just pass all responsibility onto someone else to do the thinking, take the bullet, and then you just type out what's tape-recorded, which still feels like work.  Who though?  Not going to be as easy to convince somebody to re-listen to album, it'll be disjointed, and it can't be somebody who's already writing.  Still like the pay a homeless person idea, but think that should be saved for a comic.  Listening to an album with a homeless person--that's going to take too long, waste of their time.  They have stuff they do, don't treat them like ciphers.

Oh, plagiarism.  Like the World War II guy, Stephen Hawkins.  No, that's not his name.  Ambrose?  Plagirize somebody really obvious too, that will probably avoid trouble.  Try to get caught, replace the review with a copy of a cease and desist.  Would've been better to just post cease and desist itself, but how do you get one?  Start a new blog just to plagirize, than anonymously turn myself in?  That could work.  Probably not a good idea.  Try to find a blog that's plagirized stuff, figure out what happened to them first.  Don't want to screw things up here for an album review.

Talk about the death of the album, or the rise of the mp3 blogs, or file-sharing, or mixtapes.  Something relatively contemporary, something that's always being talked about.  Post links to audio clips from Sealab and claim they are the songs.  This could work regardless of review method.  Hate file-sharing articles though, they're so MSNBC.  Find something else, but remember the Sealab idea.  What you find funny, not what anybody else will.  Not what anybody else thinks is funny, that's Good Will Hunting.  You.  Otherwise it's everything else.  Remember the reasons.

Just hyperlink other reviews.  Or do that old Amazon idea, where you just copy and paste all the terribly written Amazon reviews.  Especially the negative ones, the negative ones with lots of cursing, those always make music sound better.  Start early enough, you can probably get some kind of weird email back and forth between the really creepy ones.  Wait, this is good.  Go to wikipedia as well, delete the whole review, or really louse it up somehow, then keep checking to see who fixes it.  Contact them somehow, they all use chat, don't they?  They must.  They would.  But what are they going to say?  How much work would that take?  That's too much work.

Jesus, just write about how late this is going up.  When are these going to be finished?  At this point, is anybody still going to want to talk about LCD Soundsystem but me?  Focus on that, focus on how it's still worth repeating.  Is there anything in 08 yet with this replay value?  Besides Black Mountain and Dub Trio?  There's always something.  Nothing as big yet.  Was Silver immediately big?

Find the old Wire with the Murphy cover story, it'll spark something.  Make jokes about his weight?  Hard to tell, sometimes he does look pretty heavy.  That won't go anywhere.  Just mean and weird.  Too immature.  Heh, can't believe I wrote that.

Call them the new Metallica.  No one will get that.  No, the new...who?  New Kinks.  That's even less comprehensible.  Make fun of Prodigy, that'll never get old, right.  Hordes of Jericho versus "North American Scum."  Post videos?  Hate video posts on write-ups.  Link to that scarecrow getting punched in the face.  Link to E2-E4, compare and contrast.

Get drunk?  Write while drunk?  Not worth it.  Fake it?  Fake drunk is never really funny.   Never interesting.

Translate Pitchfork's review into other languages with babelfish until it's almost completely unreadable?  What if it's already completely unreadable.  Haven't looked at Pitchfork in months.  Look at Pitchfork again.  Where'd they put this album?  Make fun of Spin for their Against Me pick?  No, Spin is done.  That's pointless.  Pointless road, don't go down it.

Talk to sister.  Bought it for her, she probably can say something funny.  Can't base a write-up on quotes.

Why is this one so difficult?  Just put something up, anything.  Doesn't matter anyway, right.  No, matters, it matters.  Talk about great albums at perfect moments--Nirvana Nevermind, Godspeed F-sharp, Helmet Betty, Radiohead The Bends, Eliott Smith Either/Or, yeah, Silver is in that class.  We can't be the only one's who feel that way.  Wait, that's not it either, it doesn't matter if anybody does.  It's music, it's going to have to have that personal kind of relationship, it's going to be there even if we try not to write about it.  Write about the way "Get Innocuous" sounds when you're walking, how you walk in time to it, and you feel ashamed because why the hell are you doing that, timing your walk?  Is that a definition of "great music?"  People aren't moonwalking to work while listening to Michael Jackson.  But that happens everytime with Innocuous, right?  That's never going to go anywhere.  You can't write a whole paragraph on beat-timed walking.  Write about how it sounds in a car, really loud?  Isn't that going to be tied up with smoking while driving fast?  Not enough smokers left for that to appeal to anyone, and everyone is having babies, nobody drives fast.  Except kids, hate kids, hate them.  Hate hate hate.  Write about things. you. hate.  Write about those trainwreck assholes on American Idol, that'll really date the piece.  Fucking trash maggots, baby eaters.  Dreadlocked serial rapist, Carly the sack of trash.  Sales, none of them sell.  Murphy beat them in sales, had to.  Don't even look it up, assume he did.  Move away from that, it's going nowhere.  Now you're thinking about Tyler Perry movies, there's no correlation there.  Maybe there is?  Putting on a dress, putting on an act?  Putting on the party when the parties over?  Keyboards and drums a cowbell, but it's just a room, just a studio?  No friends are there at "All My Friends?"  No, nothing there.  All music is somewhat a lie.  All art, somewhat a lie.  Painting?  No, painting too, maybe, a bit.  Sculpture=biggest lie.  Takes too long.  People die, you're still sculpting.

None of this is useful.  It's like a dream journal of handicapped.  Dump it.  Move on.  Just keep listening to the album, everything has to be there, something is there.  Music is the answer.

-Tucker Stone, 2008

Comments

[Polly Purebread]

Could you be a little more thorough in your review. I mean, my eyes started to bleed a little after the 4 hours of reading effort. Not to mention the incontinence... oh the incontinence...

http://wtcctr.blogspot.com

LAME

[Nirvana Mad]

Nirvana's Nevermind was indeed a "great album at a great moment" but it has, too, stood the test of time.