LCD Soundsystem – This Is Happening

Is Murphy the electronic Beck?
Always like his output and production.
The opener Dance Yrself Clean is an epic set starter for the kind of crowd that don't want the normal paint-by-numbers electro dance party. Played this at a fashion show recently and it WORKED the floor so well. Love the seemingly sparse production but boy how do those synth patches fit JUST right bass & lead. 6.00mins in the breakdown comes for a well needed breather after the heavy middle course and then Wham! the synth comes back in to groove us all to the close. Discerning dance floors would be shazzaming this like crazy. Drunk girls bumps and stumbles into your ears like its title suggests. With its initial young punk rockist feel you think you know what you are getting but soon realise that the sharp lyrics and evolving production are the work of more depth than initially expected. Murphy has an eclectic collection of song sources on this long player and the intro of One touch pulses like you imagine detroit techno would have sounded like if dominated by Casio, rather than Roland products. I play this out almost a decade later and STILL people want to know where its from and if current or incoming. "There's no way that we can be pleased with this" - I disagree James. All I want is a classic low-fi rock beat and guitar strum that gets hi-jacked by and electronic sounding drone pedal effect and putney effects to lift an ordinary track into something worthy of the lyric of regret and pleading for self-change. The groove for I can change sounds like something a young Dave Ball (Soft Cell) might have conjured up in Leeds Polytechnic in the late 70's. Lyrically it is right up there with James's best. "I can change, I can change, I can change if it helps you fall in love" desperation never sounded so damn cool. You wanted a hit, Shimmers in its inception and the ethereal sound builds gently into something much more worth of a mere pop hit. I don't know where this track could be placed on stage nor in a club but as a much needed break in a night of relentless dancing it could be just the track to manage a come-down and build for one last groove. Sounds much more natural sonically than the production notes kit list would suggest but the lyrics which tell of an artist rebuffing his record company suggestions whilst earnest and heartfelt don't work that well for me. Phased hats announce the dreamy intro to pow pow and James's spoke words hark back to losing my edge but tell of resigned political resolution. The groove is organic but heavy with THE date-stamp and second hand music gear store of a simmons drums. Sounds like a cool late night loft party held after a tedious early evening neighbourhood meeting. I'm with the dancers as this track would have been in David Mancuso's loft. Somebody's calling me opens and stalks sonically like Grace Jones's Nightclubbing (In a great way) As it bumps along with a simple piano composition the lyric drops in and out but gradually plays second fiddle to the growing production. Home sounds like a home study demo left running overnight to see it has something worth building on - luckily just when you think it won't it becomes complete with a lyric and extra instrumentation that feels like the perfect ending for a brilliant album. LCD Soundsystem is the cool band you keep to yourself and fully document your obsession for when everyone else catches up. Still not lost their edge...