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LCD Soundsystem Review
“Sound of Silver”
March 20, 2007
DFA/Capitol
There is a famous story about Quentin Tarantino. Tarantino was a video store clerk before he became a director. The switch was flipped one day when Tarantino realized that, having seen hundreds of films, he was qualified to make one of his own. So the director of “Pulp Fiction,” “Grindhouse” and “Kill Bill” made a career of showing off his encyclopedic knowledge of obscure films by hiding them inside of something fresh, exciting and undeniably his own.
There’s no doubt that this happens in music. Many of the critical darlings of the music industry are record collectors. From Stereolab to Beck to the Beastie Boys to DJ Shadow – groundbreaking albums are created by musicians who love listening to music as much as they love playing it.
This is the underlying joy of LCD Soundsystem’s works, including their new record, “Sound of Silver.” James Murphy, LCD Soundsystem front man and producer for pioneering DFA records, put his record-store employee credentials on proud display on the bonus disk of his first record with the hipster-slapstick track, “Losing My Edge.” Throwing around a series of bored announcements about the shows he’s been to and bemoaning the fact that everyone younger than himself is already coming up with better ideas, the track is as hilarious as it is insightful about what makes these records so good.
The album mixes the electronic sensibilities of a generation raised on jokes about disco and dares to inject liquid bell-bottoms into the veins of punk boys with Mohawks. While there aren’t any trashed guitars or screaming about anarchy on display here, the spirit of irony and subversion is running loose through all nine tracks.
There’s earnestness, too. The standout track, “Someone Great,” is as sincere as Murphy gets on this record. Chimes and buzzy synths provide an anthem of regret over dumb mistakes that prematurely end the most important relationships – “and it keeps coming, and it keeps coming, and it keeps coming till the day it stops.” If there is a song that captures this sense of repentance more aptly, it has yet to have graced my ears.
While the album is dark, it is also deeply soaked in irony. It is a chewy kind of irony. The kind that coats the surface of the friends who genuinely love you, but are also infinitely cooler than you could ever hope to be.
As a kid from a nowhere town in New Hampshire, my first trips into the big city were always full of that kind of bliss. Driving around at 2 a.m., surrounded by skyscrapers where there used to be trees, it was impossible not to harbor the conviction that life had more possibility than I had ever imagined. It’s the kind of meaning you find, somehow, despite the fact that your night consisted of nightclubs, stumbling around on empty city streets and finally sitting down to a late night breakfast slam. “Sound of Silver” is the perfect soundtrack to those revelations.
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