If you can say anything about James Murphy, principal member of the ultra hip disco-punk band LCD Soundsystem and half of the DFA Records production team, it's that he defies easy classification. After producing fellow indie group The Rapture's album "Echoes," and releasing LCD's breakthrough single "Losing My Edge" during a one-year span in 2002, Murphy was crowned the godfather of "dance-punk" by the indie music press.
At this point most artists would record a quick cash-in album of "Losing My Edge"-clones, then fade into obscurity. Instead, Murphy waited three years before releasing LCD's self-titled debut on Feb. 14, along with a bonus disc that compiles their previous singles. The result is dynamite.
On this album, Murphy proves that he is a force that cannot be contained by one genre. Although taking on dance-punk with songs like "On Repeat" and "Thrills," some of the album's most impressive moments come when he tries his hand at other musical styles. The gentle "Never as Tired as When I'm Waking Up" would have been at home on the Beatles' "White Album;" it's about as far away from dance music as you can get.
The first single, "Movement," is mix of slurred vocals, programmed drums, synths, and Velvet Underground guitar. Murphy attacks the music press's tendency to create "movements without the bother of all the meaning," a critique of both the garage rock trend from a few years ago, and the dance-punk movement Murphy has been lumped into. If there is a better way to deflate the hype surrounding you than pointing out that you're just a "fat guy in a T-shirt doing all the singing," I haven't heard it.
Without a doubt the best song on the album, the humorous, tongue-in-cheek "Daft Punk is Playing at My House," tells the story of a kid getting the
famous French dance duo to play at his house. The song highlights possibly Murphy's best attribute, his sarcastic sense of humor.
It is this same humor that is sorely missing in most of the modern music landscape, which is dominated by angst-ridden modern rock, self-absorbed garage rock, boasting gangsta rap, and unexplainable emo. It's refreshing to laugh when
listening to rock music, whether it's the to image of Daft Punk playing next to a washing machine in some kid's basement, or to the laments of an ageing hipster on "Losing My Edge."
In keeping with the unusual nature of the group, the bonus disc almost overshadows the album itself. The disc is comprised of LCD's earlier singles, including "Losing My Edge," and two versions of "Yeah" (one labeled 'Crass,' the other 'Pretentious.') One of the great singles of the 2000s, "Losing My Edge" displays the non-stop rantings of a hipster who is afraid of younger "art-school Brooklynites with borrowed nostalgia for the unremembered '80s" who are stealing his crown of obscure music knowledge. No one, from record store clerks to Murphy himself, is safe from the song's biting wit.
In keeping with his ever-shifting style, Murphy's next big single, "Yeah," rejects his previous single's rambling style in exchange for simply repeating "Yeah" over and over again. As repetitive as this sounds, it is some of the catchiest music, dance-punk or otherwise, that you're likely to hear.
LCD Soundsystem could have coasted by on the crest of the dance-punk trend a few years ago. By waiting, however, they were able to record the music they wanted to, not what was dictated by a trend. This is the album that James Murphy wanted to make, with all its indulgences and experiments.
Dance music gets a bad, but partly deserved, reputation as a derivative genre in which all songs are comprised of a few minutes of bass and looped vocals. Even if Murphy's varying styles affect the flow and consistency of the album, anything's better than listening to endless variations of the same rehashed song. In a perfect world, when we think of dance music in the future we will think of LCD Soundsystem instead of DJ Sammy's "Heaven."
