Mar 08 2010 5:53 pm, JJ Dunning
LCD Soundsystem
‘LP3’
(Parlophone/DFA)
First Listen
Three years on from the excellent 'Sound Of Silver', James Murphy is back with a brand new - and, at the moment, still untitled - nine-track LCD Soundsystem album. JJ Dunning wraps his ears around it...
‘Dance Yourself Clean’
Ah, marvellous. A 9-minuter to open the album. ‘Dance Yourself Clean’ starts very quietly, with a pitter-patter of tin-cans and what sounds like wet cardboard being slapped with spoons. Gradually, like a chef making a risotto, Murphy adds more bits, sidles up with a melody, chucks in a backing chorus, a shrill bit of keyboard, and then - SHA-ZAM! - after three minutes, there’s a clip-clop of drums, and a big splash of fizzy-sounding synth is all over the show. “Don’t you wanna me to wake up?/Then just give me just a bit of your time” comes the croon. A natty little breakdown later, and after one more flourish, it ends.
‘Drunk Girls’
The shortest song on show here, ‘Drunk Girls’ is easily the rowdiest romp on the record. With a titular shout-a-long refrain, it’s a wry observational message that parodies the difference between the sexes on a night out with all the wit and vim of a stand-up comic. This record’s ‘North American Scum’.
‘One Touch’
Ah, here’s a beat resembling ‘Get Innocuous!’, boasting a gradually ascending PING that sounds like it’s wired directly to Buck Rogers’ heartbeat via a vintage oscilloscope. To add to the melange, Murphy reaches down into his vocal chords for some deep-throated Bowie-esque stage-aside aggrandising (think ‘Sound & Vision’s speaker-cone-ripplingly low “Don’t you wonder sometiiimmess?”), and then, when the high-end synth drops out, it’s leaves us abandoned on our own in the bass-heavy badlands of Proper Electro. Dark.
‘All I Want’
In the first couple of seconds there’s a squeak of feedback and a tumble of drums; as if Mr. Murphy’s having a rummage through his instrument cupboard, searching for the perfect combination of noises to immediately floor us with. Subsequently, it feels like an expert drop-of-the-shoulder when ‘All I Want’ stumbles - rather than roars - into life. It’s a seamless segue from the nether-ends of ‘Sound Of Silver’ that sports neither bloated ego nor self-conscious apprehension; evident in a steady – not showy – drum pattern, and a simple three-note guitar hook that gradually mutates into a background layer as it’s overtaken by a wandering synth. Plus, the bit after five and a half minutes when he howls “Take me home” is killer.
‘Change’
Opens with a reedy wash of synth, backed with some spongy Kraftwerk bleepiness and bleating beats. Then the vocals take their role as centrepiece, and we’re sketched a diagram of what happens when unrequited love comes off more like obsequious desperation. “It’s good in the dark/good in the dark/but into the lover’s light/here comes another fight” he sings. Then comes a nigh-on-falsetto part from Murphy, followed up by some twinkling synths and the main meat of the lyrics, “Love is a curse/shoved in a hearse/Love is an open book to a verse of your bad poetry/and this is coming from me/I can change/I can change/If it helps you fall in love.”
‘Hit’
An almost Bowie-esque beginning eventually tails off to be surpassed by the muted chug of a guitar. The riff augments the song from hereon in, with various synth gurgles and a natty reintroduction of the intro, but the main question hanging over it all is WHAT IS THIS ABOUT? Taking the lyrics on face value, it sounds like a bare-faced whinge against a record label: “You wanted a hit/But that’s not what we do/We won’t be your babies anymore/We won’t be your babies ‘til you take us home.”
‘Pow Pow’
Activate Phaser-Hi-Hat! “From this position, I will relax” sermonises Murphy, punctuating his next blast of “Pow! Pow! Pow! Pow! Pow!” with an attack of a non-descript eighties keyboard effect that goes “boooop!” (I can’t find the name for it online, or even a decent example of what it sounds like, so you’ll have to make do with that description). Then comes a menacingly staccato bass that sounds like it’s got strings as thick as your forearm. “With you on the inside/And me on the outside/There’s advantages to both,” drawls Jimmy, while his partying mates in the background bellow “ADVANTAGES TO BOTH!” in accord. No idea what they’re on about, but in the final third, the track turns into a properly space-age blast of electro-dance weirdness.
‘Somebody’s Calling Me’
The irregular thump of the intro here recalls Iggy Pop’s ‘Nightclubbing’. Initially, it’s equally sparse, but soon it incorporates a terse jabbing hook of something we’re imagining is a keytar. Stoically, the beat is maintained through to the end, with little added in the way of the usual layered LCD flourishes. It’s almost demonic in its determination not to interact with you. Frankly, it’s quite scary.
‘What You Need’
A much lighter mood to close with, this. ‘What You Need’ shimmers with neo-pop discoisms, as an organ-like synth hovers over the racing salsa-beat intro, and little licks of very-nearly-funky-but-thankfully-not-funky guitar vie for attention. A pack of Murphys are subtly employed for some top notch harmonising, and then the lyrics run like this; “You might forget/Forget the sound of a voice/Still you should not forget/Don’t forget/The things that we laughed about.” There’s an air of reminiscence, and faintly maudlin nostalgia about this track that makes it a great closing gambit.
