LCD Soundsystem’s 2007 classic “Sound of Silver” featured a one-two punch for the ages in the tracks “Someone Great” and “All My Friends.” Both were lengthy, literary, personal songs, a monumental step forward in the writing of singer-producer James Murphy and a reminder that the sensibilities of dance and electronic music can connect with head and body in equal measure. To choose a favorite between the two was difficult for any listener, chiefly because they offered such different virtues. “Someone Great” contained a wrenching sadness within the sterile repetition of a tight, glitchy loop, Murphy delivering each line with a hollowed out sense of inevitability. Follow-up “All My Friends” had no use for such an effort to compress and conceal within a tight frame; from the slide of its keyboards to the gradual layering of its guitars, the song was all churn and forward motion, the narrator making sense of his thoughts on the move.
The great strength of both songs was their unimaginable confidence; they were both statements, perceptive ones, about fundamental areas of human experience–loss, recollection, insecurity, regret. Murphy seemed to take minimal solace from either effort, but for a weary indie sensibility in the later part of the decade, the two songs could not have felt more significant, more like important statements. For the band, they were a different kind of statement: mini-artistic manifestos, two separate, inarguable indications that they could make music that meant something.
These two songs, and the twin courses they offer the band for capturing significance through a beautiful resignation and detachment, cast a long shadow over LCD’s third album, “This is Happening.” They’re a source of credibility, a reason for giddy anticipation and above all, a challenge–can Murphy throw down another gem? Will he make a new statement?
To this last and most pressing question: no. There’s no successor here. The album offers nine tracks, seven clocking in at over six minutes, but no song makes a play for the crown. And because this means none of the songs are trying to be statements, this is very much a good thing. The album finds Murphy bringing the confidence of LCD away from reserved observation to engage in some good, old-fashioned human warmth, mixing it up with the play of love and connection.
“Dance Yrself Clean” opens in a sweet spot for the band, laying down an irresistible percussive line and letting Murphy drop some of his finely observed couplets. When the song lets loose with a ragged burst of synthesizers, however, it heads somewhere grasping, even confrontational: “Don’t you want me to wake up?” he belts out, before adding “then give me just a bit of your time.” It’s the first indication that Murphy wants out of the effortless sweet spot he’s found, away from detachment, even if it means sounding less important.
It’s not that LCD Soundsystem has never been a fun band, but the enjoyment has always had a sharp edge, more the happiness you get from hearing something clever than the un-self-conscious joy of something less calculated. Across the album, LCD works to fight falling back by bringing something new to its old habits. The warm shimmer of “You Wanted a Hit” softens its defiance and confidence and points to a desire for simple connection: “We won’t be your babies–’till you take us home,” Murphy writes, declining to simply dispense with the wit. Even the danceable “Pow Pow,” eight minutes of Murphy reveling in his cleverness, overflows with exuberance: he’s less defensive and more engaged, and the music below his half-spoken lyrics is all peppy mischief.
“I Can Change” goes for something else entirely: for all its flirtations with cynicism and its self-deprecating melancholy, it’s a flat-out love song, and to hear Murphy operate in that mode is a delight. “Dance with me until I feel alright,” he says, and while he reminds us that “love is a murderer,” it’s clear that he’s friends with him anyway. This resignation to a measure of unhappiness as a starting point, rather than a conclusion, shows up elsewhere on album centerpiece “All I Want.” A hum of rough guitars almost drowns Murphy’s voice, his words coming through clearly only on the chorus, when he pleads “All I want is your pity…All I want is your pity tears.” It’s mopey, even laughable phrasing, but to its credit, it plays far differently with the music, and that’s precisely the point: no one should be reading the song. And when he belts out “take me home” in the song’s closing minutes, the sense that Murphy is finally comfortable with letting the walls down is a source for great comfort. His self-criticism and outright longing may not be the stuff of delight, but the naked sincerity underlying his words is: Murphy is looking forward, not backward, trying to change the story rather than narrate it perfectly.
Fittingly, “This is Happening” isn’t as neat a thesis as I’d like it to be. There are two certified relics among the bunch: the catchy “One Touch” sounds uncannily like a “Sound of Silver” b-side, a glum dance track where Murphy retreats back into aloofness. “Drunk Girls” is another LCD staple, the “fun single.” Yet on a record where Murphy is reaching out much more often, to greater effect and with more sincerity, the loosen-things-up role the single played on prior efforts isn’t necessary. The other tracks are happy to put on the party this time, while “Girls” comes off as making wisecracks in the next room. Yet even in these two flashbacks to an older LCD, there are glimpses of a longing to get down and participate: on “Drunk Girls,” Murphy calls out: “I believe in waking up together…so that means making eyes across the room.”
All the warmth and simple goodness of what Murphy is reaching for culminates in “Home,” the album’s gorgeous closer and perhaps its standout offering. The track dials down the anthemic reach, adds a warm glow to the glitchy percussion and settles into an almost sunny groove. Floating above, Murphy enters thinking he should write another statement: “Just do it right, make it perfect and real.” Yet he casts the project aside, confessing that his grasp on what makes us all tick may be a pose to let go of: “Under lights we’re all unsure,” he admits, and when he calls out that “no one really knows what you’re talking about,” it’s part accusation and part confession. He’s happy to let his finely-tuned narrative structures fray and dissemble, and the band is with him all the way, rising up to meet him and brimming with good feeling.
Murphy and his collaborators have become content with connecting more meaningfully, rather than being more meaningful, and the results couldn’t be any warmer or more inviting. I, for one, hope Murphy stays here with us for a while–he’s been outside too long.
“Take me home,” Murphy asks throughout the album. “This is Happening” comes out May 17–and you should listen to him.