LCD Soundsystem - This is Happening
LCD Soundsystem is stupid and James Murphy is tired of it. He’s getting too old for this shit. That’s the governing sentiment of This is Happening (due out May 18th but streaming from the band’s website for the last couple weeks). Even if we didn’t know that it’s the last LCD album ever, it wouldn’t be hard to figure out. Sure, as with all his work, Happening is a heavily sardonic stew—I doubt Murphy’s tongue has ever fully left his cheek—but there’s a certain transparency in the weariness displayed here. The band has always been about his own fractured takes on coolness, culture, and the people who follow it, and now (according to both the interviews and the lyrics) he’s taken it as far as it can go. Thank your lucky hipster stars—“hip-stars?”—that he’s decided to leave us with one final collection of nearly unimpeachable dance-y art pop tracks. It’s a hell of a note to finish on.
Sonically, Happening follows in the high-pleasure footsteps of 2007’s Sound of Silver, with its warm sounds and analog detail, while managing to do it one better by taking a few more risks with balance and mixing. Nine-minute opener “Dance Yrself Clean” is a perfect example, beginning with hand drums, synth bass, and Murphy in modest Kermit-the-Frog mode, pushed into the background. It’s here where one of the album’s most quotable lines catches your attention. “Talking like a jerk / except you are an actual jerk and living proof / that sometimes friends are mean,” he sings. [If you don’t think you know someone like that, then you’re that guy.] As soon as we’re comfortable with this reserved groove—after about three minutes—a full drum kit and fat synthesizers suddenly kick open the door and “Clean” becomes the kind of LCD song you were hoping for. Murphy’s voice stays low in the mix, though, as if the whole song were recorded live in a room without any tweaking or overdubs. He has to shout to be heard over the heavy strut and spacey riffage, and they still overpower him. “Everybody’s getting younger / it’s the end of an era, it’s true,” he admits, “break me into bigger pieces / so some of me is home with you.”
Second track and first single “Drunk Girls” (which I’ve talked about on these pages before) is the closest thing to a standard pop song we’ll ever get from LCD, its punk rock beats and mockingly inebriated chants giving people who don’t know they’re being made fun of something to jam along to. Murphy’s beloved deep, multi-layered Brian Eno backing vocals make their first appearance here (“Drunk boys, drunk boys, drunk booooooys”), though he allows that late-70s art pop section of his influences freer reign across the album. He brings back the Eno voice on “One Touch,” whose endlessly looped squiggle riff never seems to get old. It’s one of Murphy’s greatest talents, actually, using the repetitive structures of dance music to guide and shape the listener’s attention and response. He taps into a similar historic resonance on “All I Want,” which uses a krautrock beat and e-bowed lead to rather transparently ape David Bowie’s 1977 anthem “Heroes.” Early reviews have called it Happening’s version of “All My Friends,” which isn’t totally off base, but instead of pining for camaraderie, here he’s begging for a more singular and settled love. “All I want is your pity / all I want is your bitter tears,” he mumbles over and over, “take me home.” Yeah, it’s kinda pathetic on paper, but the historical “Heroes” resonance makes it poignant while the synth part in the left channel starts bleeping and blooping noticeably out of key, partially drowning out Murphy’s sad sackery. It’s almost as if he knows no one really wants to hear him whine, but he still can’t help himself.
“I Can Change” refines the crushed misery of “All I Want” into a more user-friendly package. Over a bouncy beat and warbly bass, Murphy breaks out a Stone Roses-esque melody for a just a little more pleading: “I can change, I can change, I can change / if it helps you fall in love.” Not exactly the way the coolest guy in the room usually talks, but like I said: this weariness of posturing and hip facades is all over the album. “You Wanted a Hit” brings us out of Happening’s lovelorn middle section (which, BTW, is exactly what “Us v. Them” did on Sound of Silver; the structural similarity between the two albums is knowingly meticulous) with a spacey keyboard intro leading into a muted guitar-and-drums pulse. “You wanted a hit / but maybe we don’t do hits,” he sneers over and over. The song could be directed at EMI (Murphy has expressed doubts that the mega-label would keep releasing LCD albums without successful singles) or simply at anyone expecting his band to smooth out their cheeky edges and play by the pop music rules, but its target is less important than its method. Murphy balances defensive revelations (“I try and try / it ends up feeling kind of wrong”…”Honestly we’re never smart / we fake it all the time”) with fist-in-the-air defiance (the chorus: “We won’t be your babies anymore”) to hedge his bets on both sides. He can’t give you a hit, but even if he could, he wouldn’t. It’s no accident, then, that “You Wanted a Hit” happens to be Happening’s longest and most steady-state song.
“Pow Pow” highlights the wonderfully self-deprecating humor many overlook in the best LCD songs. Over heavy percussion and a minimalist bass line that recalls Talking Heads’ Remain in Light, Murphy mumbles about seeing the benefits of both artist and spectator, active musician and semi-retiree. “I have stayed home and…learned a little bit more about my neighborhood…which is important,’ he stammers, just after an offhanded exclamation that he’s “eating [himself] to death.” The rhythmic “pow pow pow” chant that comprises the song’s refrain closely resembles beats from other LCD songs (“Time to Get Away,” etc.), and thus, in true LCD fashion, ultimately mocks them. Why keep making this music if it’s just “pow pow pow” again and again? The slinky, jazzy “Somebody’s Calling” gives us a somewhat playful, booty-call-recounting respite before Murphy & co.’s final statement. “Home” brings back the rhythms and chord progression from “Dance Yrself Clean” and attempts to give some convoluted closure to this fascinating musical story. Nobody knows Murphy and his music better than the man himself, so here’s what he has to say:
“No one ever knows what you’re talking about
so I guess you’re already there.
And no one opens up when you scream and shout
but it’s time to make a couple things clear:
If you’re afraid of what you need,
if you’re afraid of what you need,
look around you. You’re surrounded.
It won’t get any better,
so good night.”
The bass drops out, synths sputter for a second, percussion tinks away, cymbal crash and the end. Thank you.
