Real-Time Record Review: LCD Soundsystem, "Silver City"

James contra James

I first became aware of the existence of leaks as a factor in my record-consuming habits, ironically, courtesy of one I adamantly refused to go anywhere near. I'd been aware of leaks generally before the release of LCD Soundsystem's self-titled debut back in late 2004, of course - I mean, I only went to fucking college during Kid A-gate, ferchrissakes - but I'd always pretty much figured they were the domain of people way more hardcore about music not worth anywhere near my time (again, q.v. Kid A) than anything that'd ever really have any sort of impact on my conduct. The LCD record, however, was a horse of a different color; considering how (1) not even a month and a half earlier, I'd just seen James Murphy Et Al put on what remains the single greatest concert I've ever been a part of at the Echo (dare I drop a but I was there?) and (2) not even a few weeks before, DFA Compilation #2, a record I still consider to be one of this decade's very finest releases and one I immediately reccomend to anyone just starting to sit down at the big-kids' music-yammering table, LCD Soundsystem was very much a pressing concern. Me being a dummy, I figured I'd avoid the leak like the plague to, and I swear this sentence went through my head more than once, "save the pleasures for the official release date", a date I then managed to push back by ordering the British version for some unfathomable reason. Of course, my efforts were ultimately met with a record which couldn't possibly more perfectly embody the ideals of being Just Good Enough Not To Give Me Anything To Complain About; LCD Soundsystem is far from a bad record and it did little to diminish their rank in my hierarchy of favorite bands, but even I have to admit that it's pretty stuffed with songs that either needed to be fleshed out more thoroughly or (preferably) diminished and reincorporated into a larger, more ambitious song (speaking of which, go by 45:33 NOW). I mean, I still don't consider it a wasted purchase (the bonus disc is worth the price of admission by itself), but it's certainly one I wouldn't necessarily have made immediately if I'd had the sense to listen to the leak when it presented itself to me.

Well, apparently the gods like to torture me with their divine notions of circuitousness, because apparently LCD's second album, titled Silver City and slated for release in the spring of 2007, leaked in the last few days. Being that since 2004, I've grown older and, well, older with regard to my capriciousness towards the ACTUAL RECORD-LISTENING EXPERIENCE OMG OMG OMG, and being that I actually had a bunch of fun doing a real-time record review last time, I figured I might as well keep the Good-Tyme Trayne rolling along and tackle Silver City as such. And just to ward off the obvious questions, NO I WON'T BE UPLOADING ANY OF THESE SONGS TO THE BLOG, AND NO I WON'T SEND YOU THE MP3S. Learn how to wait, learn how to write, or learn how to steal if you want yr own. (There will, however, be MP3 content towards the bottom; no sense in letting another month go down the traffic-measuring shitter just because I like doing these.) ANYWAY:

1. Get Innocuous

00:00 - GREAT title to an opening song.
00:01 - The first thing you hear sounds awfully close to the beat to "Losing My Edge" (not, of course, that that's a bad thing). Nice little response to everyone who bitched and moaned about how the last album broke so thoroughly from the singles.
01:20 - IF I DIDN'T KNOW ANY BETTER, I MIGHT THINK JAMES MURPHY'S HEARD A WAS (NOT WAS) RECORD OR TWO IN HIS DAY
02:21 - Didjalike "On Repeat" from LCD Soundsystem? How about all that gigantic melodramatic processing Murphy did to his voice on 45:33? If your answer to either of these is "yes", plz go seek this song out NOW.
03:25 - You know what aspect of LCD's sound never gets enough love? The drum fills. I mean, when Murphy's filling his tracks out, he fills them the fuck out, and not just with the same little crap either, but with fully unique rolls and fills. I mean, there are no less than like four distinct ones in the space of like a minute here. Drum fills: the new cowbell?
04:55 - There's a part of me that wonders if they're just using Murphy's and Nancy Whang's voices as instruments and that it doesn't matter that I'm not combing through every one trying to divine just how adroitly they're wielded. There's another part that's kicking that part's ass back to the stone age. GOD can I ever not wait to pore over this album.
06:59 - Okay, THAT was fucking cool. May the Lord rain His blessings down upon whoever told the DFA to keep a string section handy.

2. Time To Get Away

00:12 - Okay, now it's pretty obvious that the big gimmick for this album's going to be tuned vocals. I mean, I know I'm just two songs in, but shambolic is pretty much the furthest descriptor from accurate so far.
01:00 - WE HAVE A COWBELL SIGHTING
01:36 - And a clavicle sighting. Jesus FUCK what a clavicle sighting.
02:04 - Every second that goes by leaves me more and more convinced that Sound of Silver exists just to show all the Rapture's fans what a good (as opposed to a faithful) ripoff of the Talking Heads sounds like.
04:00 - And then of course the Fall part towards the end. Would it be a LCD record otherwise?

3. North American Scum

00:00 - POLITIXXX. I mean, why not just title a song "HEY BILL O'REILLY, TALK ABOUT ME ON YR SHOW"?
00:43 - Real politics could really use more handclaps.
01:27 - What the fuck? Did the DFA spring for the Sergio Leone Backup Choir Singers or something?
02:48 - Gotta admit that this one's not holding my attention so much; realistically, I shouldn't be going back and trying to fininsh up dangling comments, but hey. That being said, unless this is just a terrible rip, this song literally has no low end. Tell me if you saw that one coming.
04:00 - Okay, four minutes into listening to James Murphy spout seventh-grade level sociopolitical observations have me wishing he'd just speak for himself. I mean I consider myself to be a fairly committed leftist, but bitching about how America's embarassing because we shut down our discos at 2 AM? Where's that picture of the dog with the broccoli when I need it?

4. Someone Great

00:51 - AKA the one that appropriates the second part of 45:33 for its own.
01:41 - Hey! Vocals! Now it kinda sounds like a Christmas carol, which is more than a little disorienting.
02:34 - As decent as this is, I have to admit that if they were going to gank any part of 45:33, I wish it'd been that unearthly house-piano bit at the beginning.
03:16 - See, now this is how I like my lyrics on DFA records - not insistent. Vocals really were the biggest red herring disco music ever had to offer up - people invariably either think that disco tracks need to be all about the vocal performance or utterly devoid of vocals alltogether.
05:00 - Okay, this one's definitely going to grow on me - right around here they really started using double-tracking to devastating effect. Not that double-tracking a vocal equals instant win in my book or anything, but the best part of damn near any DFA record is the moment when one half of it decides to go one way and the other part goes the other, even if it's just to hear how the two threads wind themselves back into one rope (q.v. the remixes for "In A State", "Colours", "Far From Home", etc).
06:22 - I get the feeling that if I hadn't heard 45:33 a squillion times already, "Someone Great" would have been a big letdown; it's very much not one of those records that's all about Getting You Excited!!!!!, or at least it doesn't sound half so much like one when it's not bordered on either side by The Untouchable House Piano Bit and That Bit Where Those Super-Fucked-Up Vocals Totally Wig Out. I guess that makes me lucky to have heard 45:33, then, although it's not like I didn't already know that.

5. All My Friends

00:00 - Oh my goodness, they seem to have decided to synthesize Steve Reich with "Rise"-era Delia & Gavin. I like how the DFA seems to be making records specifically with me in mind.
01:07 - Yeah, add some disco hi-hattery to the mix. I guarantee you that at least four of my friends will be telling me that they liked the one that sounded like the Charlie Brown theme song the best off this album. Guarantee.
01:51 - OKAY, WE HAVE A SERIOUS WINNER HERE.
02:26 - Jesus, those disco drums are driving me berzerk in the best possible way. Where the fuck was this song last time out?
03:39 - Have I mentioned how well this is layered? There's a whole world of stuff going on underneath that rolling piano - bass, synths, all sorts of shit - and it's just fighting to break through to the surface. As it should be.
04:46 - Every time the beat stutters for a heartbeat, it gets me completely.
05:00 - "And this is our New Order song..."
05:57 - The funny thing is that I was actually thinking about doing a real-time review of the Killerss most recent album until I learned that this leaked, and here I sit basically listening to the ideal song to make the Killers utterly unnecessary. Moreso than before, even.
07:22 - YES. NICELY DONE. I WILL BE LISTENING TO YOU FOR QUITE A WHILE, SONG.

6. Us v Them

01:00 - I'm beginning to think this album is as back-loaded as The Trials of Van Occupanther was front-loaded.
01:38 - I'm really liking where this one's going - i.e. straight into "Yeah" on the dancefloor inside my head.
03:18 - Goddamn, when the hell did LCD Soundystem start trip over harmonies? Maybe they just got sick of trying to write world-erasing hooks and started turning their attention elsewhere to compensate - not that this song's hook is bad, but man, when he self-harmonizes it gets disarmingly pretty.
04:14 - Seriously, if this song were descended from Remain In Light any more directly, I'd half-expect find Bernie Worrell in the credits.
05:04 - I CAN'T BELIEVE I'VE MADE IT THIS FAR WITHOUT MENTIONING ALL THE HAND-BELL. I am...an idiot. Because it's one hell of a handbell.
06:14 - Okay, the transition from "Hey! Handbell!" to "Hey! Clapping" just helped the song effortlessly turn from a Talking Heads tribute track to a Tom Tom Club one. Not that I'm complaining in the least, mind you.
07:25 - GODDAMMIT SONG, STOP RULING FOR A FUCKING SECOND, I HAVE WAY TOO MUCH TO WRITE ABOUT YOU
07:56 - I do believe I'll be buying this the day it comes out. I mean boy howdy will I ever be buying this.

7. Watch The Tapes

00:00 - God, all three of the songs left could suck horse ass and I'd be buying this after those last two songs. Seriously, people, start getting excited - this is the record you wanted so badly last time out.
00:18 - So I see that this is Sound of Silver's "Give It Up". I mention this only because it lets me express how fully I support LCD Soundsystem revisiting their own songs; everyone else has been doing it for half a decade now and nobody else does it quite as well.
01:22 - Okay, maybe it's "Give It Up" minus the frenzy (although I kinda wonder what that leave), but it's definitely got that "AH-WOOO" hook in the chorus. James Murphy: Closet Warren Zevon fan?
02:32 - It should be noted that after the last two songs, I can barely even muster the slight bit of writer-boner to go into this song's charm despite the fact that it pretty much obliviates %90 of the Hey I Like Krautrock revival bands that've sprung up in the last few years. This album is seriously good.
03:19 - God, more melody. Seriously - this is the biggest curveball the DFA's thrown since Days of Mars (and we all remember how that worked out around these parts).

8. Sound of Silver

00:52 - Okay jesus is that ever a bassline. I'd been wondering when this album was going to get sinister; who'd have guessed it'd turn out to happen during the song where he keeps comparing people to teenagers?
01:39 - I'm always totally enthralled intellectually (if not necessarily physically) by the tracks where James Murphy just makes straight-ahead dance music, mostly because of his quote about how he used to be a straight-up Rokk Dewd until he started taking fistfuls of ecstasy. Thanks to my friends, I would estimate that %95 of the ecstasy experiences I ever had came while I was listening to the Cure and Outfield and 311 (no joke), so it's just interesting to hear what the soundtrack to my life might sound like if my friends back home didn't, y'know, suck so bad.
02:57 - I have no idea precisely which synth it is that's percolating away right now but I LUV IT.
04:42 - The other critical reference point for this song is probably Lindstrom - not that all those delicately windswept chimes and freewheeling jazzy attitude toward structure can only be traced back to him, but (1) he sums that whole aesthetic up pretty adroitly, and (2) they did kinda break him and his sound to the hipsterati last year, so it kinda makes sense.
06:53 - Yeah, that one'll be another headphone-killer; there was just so much stuff going on there, and more than any of the other songs on this album, it just feels like the one where Murphy's exploring the studio space (and yes, that reference would still be unavoidable even if this track featured no bells of any kind whatsoever. Apparently James Murphy puts his pants on in the morning one leg at a time, just like the rest of us.)

9. New York I Love You

00:43 - THANK GOD THEY DID ANOTHER SLOW SONG. "The Great Release" is probably my favorite song from their debut track these days, and given that this one seems more indebted to Nilsson than Eno, you'll have to excuse me if I go full-on priapic over this one.
01:08 - There's this very faint whistle in the background which keeps on nervously peeking out to say hello, and it is GLORIOUS. God's own people are the ones that leave no layer of sound unfilled.
02:30 - You know you're dealing with a former drum engineer when even on your Poignant Piano Ballad, it's the crispness of the drums that's sitting right up front in the mix.
03:08 - I swear to god, you're all going to get this record and get to this song and go, as one, "Goddamn, I bet James must have just been frothing at the mouth to post that one". Again, they seem to have made a record explicitly for me to consume.
04:41 - YAY EXTENDED FADE-OUTS. YAY THIS RECORD. YAY LIFE. Can I preorder yet?

CONCLUSIONS
- I can pretty much guarantee you that there's going to be a whole lot of talk when this record comes out about how it's the album LCD Soundsystem really should have made instead of their debut - the dance songs are dancier (and more fun to listen to), the "imaginative" tracks are more imaginative (and more fun to listen to), and the album as a whole seems exponentially less reliant on hooks demanding the audience's approval to keep the songs moving (although the hooks, from this initial listen, sure sound pretty damned fun to listen to). However, you can pretty much take my word that anyone who espouses a sentiment of this sort is a complete idiot; Sound of Silver would be an exceptionally engaging, at-times-overwhelmingly fun record regardless of whether or not it were attached to hipster demigods like James Et Al, and to shotgun-marry a record this fun to its creator would just be a shame. There's not another "Losing My Edge" or "Yeah" on here, but those were singles anyway; they were meant to excite an audience which was ready for a good time now now now, and it's unfair to expect any album to keep pace with their explosively involving effects. It's a far more reasonable proposition to expect an album to keep up with your mood, and that's exactly what Sound of Silver manages to do in spades - not drag, or at least not drag in a way that makes the album's meatier bits less appealing by comparison. I have no idea where it'd rank among my hierarchies of albums from this year, let alone from the one we're a month away from, but if this first listen is any indication, it would most certainly be on there.

Mystery Jets, "Umbrellahead" - Given the rather startling mediocrity of the Mystery Jets and the rather mercurial pleasures of Erol Alkan's track record at producing slower songs, I have to say that I'm a little surprised to find myself enjoying this song as much as I do; for a song which clearly aspires to no heights beyond those visible from the peaks of an album cut on a Supergrass record, it's been seeing an awful lot of playtime around my apartment lately. Admittedly, this is in part due to the fact that, for whatever reason, I've just really been feeling some freewheeling piano-pop lately (hell, I even went so far as to buy a copy of Van Dyke Parks' Jump! on spec, not exactly be the wisest decision I ever made), but this really is quite a little gem - from the way Erol creates this claustrophobic teakettle of sound to the way the Jets find ways to fill it without getting oppressively "creative" to the way Blaine Harris finds to make his Ounsworthian bleat sound appropriately off-the-cuff to pass the Joanna Newsome test, the whole package might as well be designed to charm. Oh, and keep an ear out for that violin, too. ("Umbrellahead" is currently unavailable for sale, but click here to buy the Diamond in the Dark EP from Rough Trade, which features a whole grip of tracks produced by Erol Alkan)

Mechanical Bride, "Poor Boy" - I freely admit that England probably didn't need a Lavender Diamond to call its own, but they seem to have gotten one anyway in the form of Mechanical Bride; luckily for all of us, their version has at least as many undeniably good songs to their credit as ours. "Poor Boy" is an unassuming little track, never demonstrating even a hint of ambition of breaking out of its summery lilt, but the contrast between vocalist Sarah Doss' performance and, well, both of the other elements that make up the song (a breezy piano and a harmonizing second vocal track) come close to Beach House levels of nigh-paralyzing sumptuousness; two decades' worth of Sarah McLauchlan clones (not to mention their complete and total inversion at the hands of Lily Allen) have pretty adroitly conditioned me to expect a voice as clear and warm as Doss' to slip into Soulfully Performative Histrionics at any minute, and it's an unalloyed pleasure to discover that she's about as fond of that mode of singing as I am. "Poor Boy" may not be much, but the more I listen to it, the more that strikes me as the point. (Click here to buy the "In The Throes" 7" direct from Transgressive Records [scroll down to find it] - I hear it comes in some fancy-ass packaging, although since I don't own a turntable (yet) I've got no reason to know one way or the other.)

Sparrow House, "When I Am Gone" - And what the hell; as long as we're going to ride this wave of gentle pop music out, we might as well take it to its recent logical conclusion at the hands of Sparrow House, side project of Voxtrot stage keyboardist Jared Van Fleet. There's actually an in-depth review set to go up on Stylus any day now, but really the most effective way to sell people on the virtues of Sparrow House is simply to let people hear it, if only because of how effectively descriptive phrases like "Nico-esque" or "worthy of inclusion on a Wes Anderson soundtrack" condemn a legitimately beautiful slice of pop music to zeitgeist-y hell. Songs like those on Sparrow House's debut EP Falls don't sound achingly beautiful because they remind you of anything, or at least certainly not anything you'd be too likely to share with the world; they sound achingly beautiful because they identify the point and then get to it, and limit their excursions to as great a degree as possible. I mean, "When I Am Gone" works because it operates strictly on its own economy - trying to couple its plinky-plonky little piano solo or its hushed delivery with any imagery, much less one in which someone else attempts to plant a flag, just ruins it for everyone. My advice would be to download this and bury it deep in whatever playlist you curate on your iPod that serves as a catch-all for random songs, because the odds are better than great that it'll absolutely floor you when it sits down and lets itself play out on its own terms. Ditto for the rest of the EP - but, again, you'll just have to keep checking Stylus for more on that. (Click here to buy the Falls EP directly from Sparrow House; it is most emphatically worth every penny.)