James Murphy might be too smart for his own good. I saw LCD Soundsystem perform at Lollapalooza in 2007. They were the second-to-last performer of the night, right after which was to be, holy of holies, Daft Punk. It was like the heavens had aligned, but Murphy almost seemed embarrassed by real life's lining up with one of his songs, simply saying "I'm not even going to comment on this." Murphy might be rock's most ironic frontman--even his attempts at sentiment in later records have this apologetic thing about them, like "Isn't it crazy that a cynical guy like me is being so emotionally direct?" The pose seems so...
calculated. Again this would all be moot if the music were more interesting, but LCD's first record is pretty boring, an album as bleached-out as its cover. I've never understood exactly how this could work as dance music, since Murphy refuses to put any low end into any of these songs. Everything is harsh and trebly and minimalistic--dance music for art installations. The attempts to combine dance and rock don't work as well as they did on the two follow-up records and a couple of these songs are nothing more than eight-minute-plus odes to percussion and screeching synth noises. James' method is to start out quiet and get louder and louder and louder, which might work if you're Mogwai but gets awfully irritating in a dance track. The only track that really works is "Tribulations", but nevertheless it's depressing to note that it's the album's least adventurous song. "Losing My Edge" is a shaggy-dog story set to music, "Great Release" starts out as an alright Brian Eno ripoff but ends in three minutes of pointless noise, and "Yeah" is just too noisy to enjoy. At least the album's, uh, clever?
MY RATING:
5.5
LCD Soundsystem - "Losing My Edge"
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