LCD Soundsystem - This Is Happening

I've been trying for a while to work out why I like LCD Soundsystem.

James Murphy isn't a D&B producer, and is surely therefore of little importance in mankind's future survival as we speed headlong into the last few days of our fossil-fuel driven consumerist empire and smack bang into a Malthusian, Mad Max hell-scape.

I mean seriously, what use is dance punk going to be for protecting your family during the energy blackouts and food riots that will come to dominate the latter half of of the 2010s?

I'll tell you what fucking use it's gonna be.

This Is Happening is an album built out of the music I grew up on, and the music I found when I first discovered that there was a world of stuff available outside the narrow group of artists that the radio deemed to have value. It positively reeks of Eighties post-punk synthpop and of the New Wave bands that inspired it. Bowie, Eno, David Byrne and Talking Heads, Blondie, Joy Division, New Order, Gary Numan and a hundred others. They're all there.

Run up on "Drunk Girls" (decried by many as shit upon it's initial release) and tell me that isn't 1970s Bowie. "Pow Pow" has more than a touch of Talking Heads' 1979 headkicker "I Zimbra" and "All I Want" channels Joy Division's Transmission with all the respect and appreciation that the original masterpiece deserves.

And then we get to "I Can Change".



The problem with Sound Of Silver was that following the two hit combo of "Someone Great" and "All My Friends" in a satisfactory manner was always going to be impossible. Here were two songs of such massive power and beauty that the tracks to follow seemed hollow afterwards. All My Friends is particularly bad for this, as it builds over seven and a half minutes to an intense climax that just leaves the listener feeling drained and lost. It'll probably even make you cry if you hear it in the right state of mind/intoxication. How Pat Mahoney can keep drumming to that thing does my head in every time.

Anyway, whilst I Can Change is no All My Friends (and definitely isn't trying to be either), it certainly has the same effect, being as it is the best track on the album and appearing as it does right in the middle of the tracklist, leaving you wondering where the album can possibly go next. Fortunately, "You Wanted A Hit" switches the album into a more downbeat recovery mode, and avoids the sudden mid album crash that always seemed to afflict Sound of Silver.

I'd go as far as to argue that there isn't a dud track on the This Is Happening. Since the first album, James Murphy has been suggesting that it's time to bring an end to the LCD project, but going on the strength of This Is Happening, I'd say that this soundsystem hasn't yet run it's course.

So why do I like LCD Soundsystem and why the hell do they matter? I guess it's because James Murphy trips the same receptor cells as David Byrne did all those years ago. Through LCD, Murphy has created a dedicated tribute to the music that he loves, but he's also an incredibly talented lyricist, with a dry, despairing sense of humour that you'll struggle to find anywhere else. Listening to This Is Happening might make me feel all nostalgic, but it would be a serious injustice to say that it isn't a fantastic album in it's own right.

So what if LCD Soundsystem isn't drum and bass? Sure, it won't help fight off the roving bandit gangs and irradiated hordes of 2019, but I know that, barricaded deep within my bunker, as I open up one of my last few cans of dog food, I'll be able to listen to LCD Soundsystem, and it'll remind me of what life was like before the collapse of society, and maybe I'll feel just a little bit better.