Ouroboros
LCD Soundsystem - This Is Happening
I’ve been living with this album for about a day now and still can’t shake the sense of crushing disappointment.
The right sounds have been made by the right people, the cover is very ‘now’ (now being someplace in late 1985) and the lead single was reassuringly tongue-in-cheek, winky-winky, cutesy-pie dance. BUT. As a whole, it falls short. Eight tracks too short.
Explanation? I’d love to…
What do we know of James Murphy? He has very good taste in music. He doesn’t take himself too seriously and all in all seems a decent enough bloke. There is however one problem. James Murphy is this generations’ Noel Gallagher. Not since Gallagher has there been a popular artist so brazen with his thievery of others ideas as to leave the listener feeling somewhat soiled, complicit in the crime through listening.
On their debut album caps were doffed toward influences, elements subliminally woven, lacquered with a new take - the corpse of yesteryear pulled from the grave and Frankensteined into life by a tubby New Yorker. However, I ask you, nearly a decade later, what has changed? Lead single ‘Drunk Girls’ hijacks Bowie’s ‘Boys Keep Swinging’ call/response chorus to yawn-inducing effect, no great shakes considering the Killers and Blur (twice) have done this to greater effect in recent times. Then we have ‘Somebody’s Calling Me’ or Iggy Pop’s ‘Nightclubbing’ by it’s other name. This wouldn’t be such of a problem if it wasn’t for the fact that he shook all of the best leaves from the Bowie family tree last time round (see the Heroes-esque guitars of ‘All My Friends’ or the Transformer aping ‘New York I Love You…’)
- Definitely Maybe/LCD Soundsystem
- (What’s The Story)/Sound Of Silver
- Be Here Now/This Is Happening
- 2010/1997
…you get the idea.
And I want to like this album - I do, I do! Despite my protests at the time over what I perceived as a cynical attempt to crash wheepy indie fans pissed-up Saturday nights’ ‘All My Friends’ does evoke memories of more innocent, maybe even better times. ‘Someone Great’ was one of last decade’s greatest singles but you can’t rest on your laurels. You do and you become your own tribute act, fall out with your bandmates and never speak to your broth- oh, sorry. Lines blurring again…
So, is the party over? Perhaps, the best cut of the album is arguably opener ‘Dance Yrself Clean’ but this is such a stand out because it manages cultivates an enigmatic, mysterious air in contrast to the foot-through-front-door-all-guns-blasing previous albums first tracks ‘Daft Punk…’ or ‘Get Innocuous’. All in all ‘This Is Happening?’ sees LCD at a stand still. A band who know what they are, where they are, but sadly not where they could nay, should be going.
‘Progression is moving forward, regression is moving backward. Anything else is just ‘gression’. - Noel Gallagher.
Bang to rights.
