Even Heroes Die, Little Billy

LCD's set from last night's Fillmore at the TLA show


HINDSIGHT: A BITCH

I really thought that everyone's championing of LCD's Sound of Silver would place the best possible horseman at the reins of general alternative music, and that this charioteer would be able to lead us straight through the sun, to our much yearned for Eden, a place free of indie bitching, an Eternal Disco. I was wrong.

WHY DIDN'T ANY ONE UPSTANDING CRITIC TRY TO FIND FLAWS IN SILVER?

No good answer. Maybe it was too early to do so. Maybe I am one of the first ones, even just now, able to attempt such a thing. Having now probably listened to each track around 500 times, I can say it is entirely possible to get sick of the sound of silver, to think that "North American Scum" and "Us V. Them" need to be shortened, that maybe the speaker of "Time to Get Away" is too much of an asshole, etc, etc. It's possible. Clearly one of the band's biggest fans, I stalked and then found the leaked Silver files very early, I think it was just before Thanksgiving, IN HINDSIGHT the worst fucking possible time. Everyone stopped releasing music in '06 because "how the fuck am I going to get on critics' year end lists by releasing a record in December?" I had all the time in the world to listen to the new record. And I fucking did, and when I wrote this, I thought I had spent the perfect amount of time with the record, that I had found my own kairos for writing about it. IN HINDSIGHT, what had probably happened is hubris had kicked in, that I had become disgustingly proud of myself for knowing this record inside-out, and that I, like every other critic, had become caught in its spell and gave it just a little more credit than it deserved.

"WELL I'M LOSING MY EDGE / TO ALL THE INTERNET KIDS / THAT LIKE THE LCD SOUNDSYSTEM FOR ITS / 'SONGS'."

What I hadn't thought of was that every other indie, alt, hipster dude/ette out there would soon enough be as enamored as I was with Murphy's transformation into a songwriter. It still took about a month after Silver had been officially released for the oldschool hipster caveat to well up in my mind: if the indie/hipster chic establishment endorses something, there's probably something wrong (not hip enough for uber hip me) with it. I have no problem with this line of thinking. Neither would James Murphy, first and still foremost, creator of "Losing My Edge".

"HOW CAN YOU NOT LIKE 'SONGS'?"

This all came to a head at last night's free (bad idea), myspace sponsored (worse idea), LCD show at the Fillmore at the TLA (worst idea ever). You see, I have been spoiled. In 2005, at what I guess was the fifth anniversary of Making Time, an incipient LCD live act had lots to prove. And IN HINDSIGHT, but remembered like yesterday, on the relatively small main stage of Transit did they ever prove it. They, the accredited members of LCD Soundsystem, not some motley crew, took the stage. Red light on Murphy's mic. He stepped into it, already sweating. He took a swig from a bottle of Jack Daniels. He took two tambourines, one in each hand, looked at them in turn, first the left, then the right, and then slapped himself in the face with them. The band immediately launched into "Beat Connection". It is still the best live performance of any song in the LCD catalogue that I have heard.

Tracks, better, jams, like "Beat Connection" as opposed to songs like "North American Scum" or "Daft Punk Is Playing At My House", work really well live. They are so big that they simply set a crowd on fire. At that early show the set included similar jams "Losing My Edge", "On Repeat", "Yeah" (Crass), and for the denouement a cover of Paperclip People's "Throw." The set and the energy and the environment were perfect, and what happened that night wasn't an LCD Soundsystem show, it was a Rage Against the Machine show, and if, like me you didn't have the balls to go to a Rage show, then you were ecstatic at the realization that another band could set you free in that way.

By comparison an atrocity occurred last night. I need to get this out of the way here, the lighting (I don't know whether LCD or the TLA's to blame) was terrible: way too bright, and white, not nearly enough colors or effects. What was truly upsetting though was how a growing in popularity headliner, now with a more than sufficiently large catalogue, could perform way too short of a set, maybe barely reaching an hour. That set needs to be at least twenty minutes longer. No "Get Innocuous" the best dance jam on the new record. No "Someone Great", Murphy's best song. No "Beat Connection" or "On Repeat" or "Yr City's A Sucker." No "Jump Into The Fire" or "Give It Up." James (maybe this will light a fire under your ass if you, like me, like to Google blog search yourself), The Rapture's live act slaughters yours.

What's worse, made even more unbearable by the fact that it happened here, in Philly, the one place where things like this don't happen, is that general sense I got from the placid and serene, and in no way even 1/2 moshing, crowd was that the show was great. Was nobody else from the Transit show there last night? Why in the fuck weren't we throwing all kinds of weird shit on the stage in protest, throwing shit off the balcony, raising hell, until we got the performance that we didn't pay for, but deserved all the same?

AND THE 64,000 DOLLAR ANSWER...

With songs like "All My Friends" and "Someone Great" LCD stopped being just for kids who didn't want anything to do with the bullshit aesthetics of 21st century punk, and who were maybe just a little bit curious about disco music too, but who still liked to fuck shit up from time to time, and started to also be for pussies. Which isn't entirely a bad thing, but it's definitely not the best thing, especially on stage, and which made me firmly realize this morning, at around 7:02 A.M., that LCD Soundsystem and their new record Sound of Silver have left plenty of room for improvement.

Pulp Diction

That easy, huh...


I think it pretty safe to say that a majority of people under 40 would admit to at least liking Pulp Fiction. The movie epitomizes our generation's notion of cool. The characters talk fast and dirty and sharp, and they all live extraordinary lives, killing, doping, dancing-- no nine-to-fivers. When we watch this movie, we satisfy a repressed curiosity and yearning for the distasteful. Decorum (and i think rightly so) demands nearly all of our time, but eventually you feel the urge to tell decorum to go fuck itself, and that is when you pop Pulp Fiction in your DVD player. Well, I think that listening to certain coke-hop can also satiate that appetite.

Take this mixtape by Juelz Santana and Lil Wayne, Blow: The I Can't Feel My Face Prequel. I got my hands on it about a week ago, and since then it has completely seized me. It's not what Elz and Weezy are saying, it's how they're saying it. This is poetry at its finest, new and elegant. It's just like listening to Tarantino's Vincent and Jules for the first time. I could quote the record ad infinitum to hammer the point, but a few examples from Santana should do the trick:

"I cook good, make it look good, damn straight. / Put coke in the pot, take out pancakes. / Double stacks, triple stacks, why not? / I got that syrup too, jus call me IHOP."

"... fiends go to work, after the work you sell 'em. / They know they got to buy more, they head hurt, they eyes sore. / You sellin' that cheap rock, sheetrock, drywall /... I be chef, the chef / you never have to rechef what I chef. Comprende?"

"Now let me introduce the world to my girl. / She white, she bright, she shine like a pearl. / And I ain't talkin' 'bout Lindsey Lohan / I'm talkin' 'bout that sniff, that blow man."

I know that this kind of Rap can be misunderstood, and that it should in no way fall upon the youth. But it would be a great mistake to eradicate such creativeness and polish of language. It does serve a purpose. It does create a fanciful world for adults, just like the world of Tarantino's Pulp Fiction, in which we can safely transgress the restraints of ordered society and briefly don the costume of a bad ass. I think that listening to Blow or watching Pulp Fiction can be healthy activities if we use them to cathartically purge our frustrations and fulfill our fantasies, not establish them.

This Is My LCD Soundsystem Post

Wait until they hear "Get Innocuous"


Probably my favorite band, um, recording moniker. You really do have to remind yourself that James Murphy crafts 99.993% of LCD's material. Listen to yourself say it: "James Murphy is LCD Soundsystem." It is how he expresses himself. The depth with which he expresses himself on his new record due out in March, Sound of Silver, devastates me.

So far, LCD Soundsystem has been about levity and play. Its most lauded song, "Losing My Edge", is about not taking oneself seriously. "Beat Connection", "Too Much Love", and "Never As Tired As When I'm Waking Up" are about The Game. There was the extremely unsubtle swipe at every artist that released a song in 2003, "Yeah." In 2005 Daft Punk played his house and fat guys were singing left and right. Now believe me, I know that "On Repeat" and "Disco Infiltrator" are about The System. But though the lyrics can at times be most relevant and weighty, the frivolity of the music and the "geek out" reactions that occur to it make LCD's catalogue prior to S.o.S., make James Murphy prior to sometime after the self-titled release, seem immature.

LCD Soundsystem had a pretty big impact on the indie dance music scene. It opened the flood gates, and now more than ever, truly immature music is overwhelming the market, e.g. The Klaxons, Kitsune. It is only fitting that LCD, (let's just say) the band, that arguably spawned this epidemic, cure it. Well, Sound of Silver is a very mature record. The "silver" is polish. Before you even listen to the record, Murphy is conveying through the title that what you're about to hear is not cheap and quick, but painstaking and rich.

Murphy has always proclaimed a deep love for disco, the genre of silver, and on Silver he immediately honors it with a new standard, opener "Get Innocuous." No dance punk here, thus, we are healed. "Time to Get Away" bluntly advises knowing when to call it quits, when to stop feeling guilty and when to move on, and the music falls in line as well, no house synths, no arpeggios, just simple Rock. "Daft Punk Is Playing At My House" is a poor man's "North American Scum," a song which wisely realizes that most people in Europe are snobby assholes, and that N. Americans that don't embrace their own culture are even bigger assholes (e.g. me, but I really am trying to change now-- I just downloaded all the records by The Doors. Strange Days is great). "Us V. Them" places rock before disco, flipping the "Beat Connection/On Repeat" formula, and reiterates the Caddyshack "slobs" (us) v. snobs" (them) theme. "Watch the Tapes" informs Upper-Middle class America that it sucks. "New York I Love You, But..." hypothesizes that New York reached its capacity in culture, in business, in population some time ago, maybe 5 or 10 years, and that any further development will actually suffocate the city to such a degree that, well, you better have an awesome girlfriend before you move there. ("Mother told you true... maybe there'll always be someone there for you and you'll never be alone... but maybe she's wrong, maybe I'm right... and so here's this song.") But I haven't even talked about the good songs yet.

The title track really breaks new ground in terms of LCD. Just when you think you're going to get a disco banger, when that beat and that bass get you going, the piano sounds, the drip efx kick in, and the cerebral smacks you in the face. You're paralyzed. Even when the bass returns, you don't move, you just stand there, jaws agape, "Ahing" along with Murphy at his ethereal creation.

"All My Friends"-- I know what every critic is going to say about this one: "Here, Murphy masterfully apes New Order"-- should not be so quickly classified. It is much more than a New Order pastiche. First, the piano is so sincere and almost overly symbolic: you touch it, converse with it, no third party (power) necessary, just you and an old friend. Second, the song's message. The song warns against forgetting your friends and the importance of shared human experience, warns against becoming an introvert and a workaholic. This is a song that each male prep school in the country's graduating class should play at its senior prom. Trust me.

Lastly, there's "Someone Great", James Murphy's song about loss. Whether he's talking about a parent or his first love or his best friend, shit maybe even his dog, it doesn't matter, the phrasing is that beautiful:

"To tell the truth I saw it coming / the way you were breathing. But nothing can prepare you for it / the voice on the other end... the coffee isn't even bitter / because what's the difference... and then it keeps coming / til the day it stops... there shouldn't be this reign of silence / but what are the options / when someone great has gone?"

James, clearly you decided to grow up. Thanks, bro. Before Sound of Silver you gave me music I could enjoy, now I have something to cherish.