LCD Soundsystem
This Is Happening
"Albums to me aren’t really about things—they are things, if that makes any sense. It’s not a narrative, so I never know how to answer that. I understand the question, but I don’t know how to answer it, other than to make something up." James Murphy
He's probably telling the truth, although Murphy can be a bit of a prankster. Whether he is or isn't doesn't really matter. Not that it wouldn't be interesting if he was lying--if This Is Happening had some secret overall personal meaning to him and his compatriots--but that it's been passed on now, and the truth about music is less about what it means to those who make it and more about what it means to you after it is made. The relationship isn't one of sharing, it's one of giving. LCD Soundsystem made something, they gave it to you, they hope you paid for it somehow, and that's it. Live, they'll share an experience, but the music itself--its initial composition, the recording, that act of creation--it's not about them after its begun the infection. It initiates, then it expands. You play it where you play it, how you play it, it becomes the soundtrack at times, the reason others.
It's a mistake to think you're in charge of anything beyond the timing, but it's an understandable mistake.
It opens quietly, with "Dance Yrself Clean", and while you see the quiet/loud build up coming (a trick he's learned, a trick he's mastered), the electronic KEY that comes, it makes for a JOLT, even when it gets pushed to the side of the speakers, even when the balance gets thrown off, and he's high-pitching his vocals, adding extra consonants to words, and then he's howling, and then...holding it? Holding a vocal, hair-metal style? There's some Eno here, some Bowie, but it's--what is that? It's spinning like a lazy susan. "Sometimes friends are mean", and "the tedious march of the few", and "dance yourself clean, yeah". The drums are finished, that was them, they said goodbye. There's still some mumbling to do.
Then, "Drunk Girls". It's a goofball song that the cool kids hate, the rest of us--we don't mind. It's a cha-cha-cha song, you're supposed to cha-cha to it.
"One Touch" gets back to "Dance Yrself Clean", it's another song set on top of a revolving record, it's homemade Excitebike on a 45. There's hills at first, you get those out of the way and get into that smooth part, like T&C Surf Design level one shit. The sky gets clouded up with those starfields that used to remind people of 2001 until 2001 became an old people movie and the starfields become associated with free screen savers that time out to the low end on cheap speakers. (The children voicing "One Touch" are the starfield.) It goes back to Excitebike for a while, with blips where the guy with the tiki mask jumps over the big holes. The whole thing is circular, it's spinning around. Near the end is some breathing stuff, it's a reference, doesn't matter what to. Nobody topped the breathing in the clown song from Akira, so its a good thing he gets back to the kids, even better when he starts interrupting them so that they can interrupt him later. It's blown timing, on purpose, so he can finish things up. It's too long, but that's okay. It's 2010, too short is the new way to snooze.
"All I Want" is already covered--well not yet, but it will be. It's the most meaningful song on the album, although meaning is shit. I hate finding out what meaning means. The only thing I have is this, my document, and it's too much--way too much--to imitate a pretense towards caring about what goes beyond the now, the past or the correct. There's either a pulse or there's nothing, but pulse can't be prodded or replicated, and all the cooing and the goring have to be for something. Truth isn't something that can be faked, but art has its own truth, talking has another. Feelings are shit too. That's an express route to death, it's why people like liars so much. I think you're born clean, sorry.
"I Can Change" and "You Wanted A Hit" are as steeped in "reference" as "All I Want", but they miss a bit of the personality brought forth in "Want". Basically: good songs, good songs. Just not barn-burners. You slow it down for these, then you speed it up again, it goes on, and you're in a room with the crew. It's these that read the most as band songs, and they come so soon after "All I Want" (which isn't) that they suffer a bit by comparison. They aren't about change, and the hit isn't as cynical as it sounds. It's not text though, so don't read it.
The album's closer is a play by play--you ride out from here, and if it feels like going backwards, it should. There's no kermit the frog song, but that's because those moments have already been covered (the show at Terminal 5, the live-in-studio version of this album) this year, and part of Murphy's ongoing thing is the way he moves things around (usually forward, but not always) while rarely retreading the same ground. (Opinions differ on this one.) It's the best album they made, because they didn't make an album, not really. They finished one, a trek that started with a single about being too cool for school and being too old to use that phrase. They finished it by barking at the record companies (with a studied 'tude) that they never had to dally with in the first place, and they--meaning him--decided to close the door on their own party, before we stopped having our own, and started living in their glare.
-Tucker Stone, 2010
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