LCD Soundsystem “Sound of Silver”
August 7th, 2007LCD Soundsystem, just not like your average dance band, are they?
It’s like blasting the Fall and old-school dance into one of those giant particle accelerators, creating a whole new musical atom whose sound made everyone dance like an epileptic being electrocuted. The first album was a kaleidoscope of beats and grooves that shattered normal preconceptions of what dance music should be like, clearly shown in a chaotic live set that has been adopted by the new breed of so-called New-Ravers. “Daft Punk Is Playing In My House” helped demolish the myopic and pretentious realm the dance fields such as electro-clash had become and brought the original fun it all was at the beginning.
While the first album relied heavily on sparkey drums and schizophrenic keyboards, this is an album more lucid and overall more lush in sound than its bombastic predecessor. It sonically simmers. Its beats are more gut-throbbing and its electro sound more trance-y. This is 21st Century dance music left to simmer, allowing its various ingredients from bygone times to mesh and blend.
The first album was carried along by strong singles that overwhelmed the more relaxed yet no less wonderful songs such as “Never As Tired”. Here the wave of music is more structured, more fluent and definitely more delicately layered. Seen from a whole piece of work it’s slinkier and sexier and I felt like I was learning to enjoy it more quickly than the first album.
However to be honest it is not a revolutionary change or a complete change of style for LCD Soundsystem. The two albums can definitely be seen as sisters that compliment each other but that’s James Murphy for you. He just wants to keep you dancing, keep you bopping, keep that foot constantly jigging like a bad case of Parkinsons without making you think and wonder. And lets all thank him for it.
Conor O'Neill is a winetaster and former Buenos Airen, studying History and Politics in Trinity.
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I would agree it is not a “revolutionary change”, its and evolutionary change. I think Murphy has the above intentions, too keep you dancing, to keep you bopping… but there is a great switch in lyrical and emotional tone I think. A depth in songcraft and writing. A real today rock band here to blow your mind, make you move and listen with a little heart wrench in the lyrics while your driving home from work. He is retro classic. Tomorrow or ten years from today Murphy will obviously seize the thrown as a pioneer in introducing a musical revolution back to the world. Sound of Silver is the real beginning. A classic album out today and an evolutionary step to tomorrow.