I’m counting down my 100 favourite songs of all time. To keep this from becoming a Bob Dylan / Tom Waits love-in, only one track per artist is allowed.
Go to 83: I Feel Love by Donna Summer
Go to 85: That's Not My Name by The Ting Tings
“That’s how it starts”
I hated the very first LCD Soundsystem song I ever heard. Reviewing a compilation of then-unheralded New York-based artists that included The Rapture and The Walkmen, I confidently declared:
“I’d happily never hear the awful noise of LCD Soundsystem again”
The track in question was a sub-Jon Spencer Blues Explosion piece of noisy trash rock called Tired. Listening to it today, I stand by the above sentiment even if its ultimate expression proved so utterly erroneous. Thanks to the Wayback Machine archive for immortalizing my foolish words forever.
The real irony is not how wrong I was – after all, who doesn’t make a bad call every now and again – but the fact that the above sentence concludes by praising a song by Le Tigre. That “funky house with screeching punk vocals” was the DFA remix of Deceptacon and I was blissfully unaware that the swagger driving the track bore all the hallmarks of DFA Records’ co-founder, producer and musician James Murphy, aka LCD Soundsystem.
The next time I heard James Murphy’s music, my earlier judgement was spectacularly overruled. This was the musically pulsating and lyrically phenomenal Losing My Edge, where Murphy, someone so associated with the production side of music, introduced himself as one of the 21st century’s most interesting lyricists.
The song is a first-person tale of music one-upmanship (“I heard everything before anybody”) that’s suddenly under threat from “better looking people with better ideas and more talent and they’re actually really really nice”. It’s smart, knowing, pathetic, hilarious, generous, sad and, for me, utterly relatable.
I had dedicated a portion of my youth to discovering and writing about new music. These attempts at taste-making yielded the pleasure of being the person who helped turn friends on to new artists, dragging them along to tiny gigs to see bands that would soon be filling thousand-seater concert halls. It was fun being like wannabe music empressario Jimmy Rabbite in The Commitments, whose friends said about him:
But the internet changed all that. The exclusivity I had amongst my friends by virtue of record labels sending me dozens of promos a day was shattered by MP3s, Napster and torrenting. People gave me hard drives to fill with gigs of my music so that everyone I knew now had all the same records I did. I was losing my edge (granted on a much less significant scale as James Murphy) and soon lost interest in keeping it sharp.
Digital technology changed how traditional wannabe taste makers worked, as Murphy suggests in the fantastic line “I’m losing my edge to the internet seekers who can tell me every member of every good group from 1968 to 1978”. But a shift in focus from discovery as a weapon to discovery as a tool is also a consequence of age - Murphy frequently refers to “the kids” in Losing My Edge - and aging is a theme he will return to again, most notably on the spiritual sequel to that song and LCD Soundsystem’s true masterpiece, All My Friends.
The first LCD Soundsystem album kicks off with another knowing music reference. Daft Punk Is Playing At My House describes, quite possibly, the greatest house party ever and provides an intoxicating intro to an excellent record that features the New Order-like stylings of Tribulations, the dancefloor instincts of Disco Infiltrators and the crunchy rhythms of On Repeat, home of astoundingly cynical lyric:
Go to 83: I Feel Love by Donna Summer
Go to 85: That's Not My Name by The Ting Tings
“That’s how it starts”
I hated the very first LCD Soundsystem song I ever heard. Reviewing a compilation of then-unheralded New York-based artists that included The Rapture and The Walkmen, I confidently declared:
“I’d happily never hear the awful noise of LCD Soundsystem again”
The track in question was a sub-Jon Spencer Blues Explosion piece of noisy trash rock called Tired. Listening to it today, I stand by the above sentiment even if its ultimate expression proved so utterly erroneous. Thanks to the Wayback Machine archive for immortalizing my foolish words forever.
The real irony is not how wrong I was – after all, who doesn’t make a bad call every now and again – but the fact that the above sentence concludes by praising a song by Le Tigre. That “funky house with screeching punk vocals” was the DFA remix of Deceptacon and I was blissfully unaware that the swagger driving the track bore all the hallmarks of DFA Records’ co-founder, producer and musician James Murphy, aka LCD Soundsystem.
“To tell the truth”
The next time I heard James Murphy’s music, my earlier judgement was spectacularly overruled. This was the musically pulsating and lyrically phenomenal Losing My Edge, where Murphy, someone so associated with the production side of music, introduced himself as one of the 21st century’s most interesting lyricists.
The song is a first-person tale of music one-upmanship (“I heard everything before anybody”) that’s suddenly under threat from “better looking people with better ideas and more talent and they’re actually really really nice”. It’s smart, knowing, pathetic, hilarious, generous, sad and, for me, utterly relatable.
I had dedicated a portion of my youth to discovering and writing about new music. These attempts at taste-making yielded the pleasure of being the person who helped turn friends on to new artists, dragging them along to tiny gigs to see bands that would soon be filling thousand-seater concert halls. It was fun being like wannabe music empressario Jimmy Rabbite in The Commitments, whose friends said about him:
“You had the Frankie Goes to Hollywood album before anyone else. And you were the first to realize they were shite.”
But the internet changed all that. The exclusivity I had amongst my friends by virtue of record labels sending me dozens of promos a day was shattered by MP3s, Napster and torrenting. People gave me hard drives to fill with gigs of my music so that everyone I knew now had all the same records I did. I was losing my edge (granted on a much less significant scale as James Murphy) and soon lost interest in keeping it sharp.
Digital technology changed how traditional wannabe taste makers worked, as Murphy suggests in the fantastic line “I’m losing my edge to the internet seekers who can tell me every member of every good group from 1968 to 1978”. But a shift in focus from discovery as a weapon to discovery as a tool is also a consequence of age - Murphy frequently refers to “the kids” in Losing My Edge - and aging is a theme he will return to again, most notably on the spiritual sequel to that song and LCD Soundsystem’s true masterpiece, All My Friends.
“And so it starts”
The first LCD Soundsystem album kicks off with another knowing music reference. Daft Punk Is Playing At My House describes, quite possibly, the greatest house party ever and provides an intoxicating intro to an excellent record that features the New Order-like stylings of Tribulations, the dancefloor instincts of Disco Infiltrators and the crunchy rhythms of On Repeat, home of astoundingly cynical lyric:
“I wish I could complain more about the rich but then / All their children would line the streets, come to every show / No one wants that.”
I tend to forget what a good album it is but that’s likely a consequence of how Murphy followed it up. An early single, North American Scum, gave no real indication of what was in store on LCD Soundsystem’s second album, Sound of Silver. That boisterous, baiting track fit the (loose) template established by Murphy on his debut, but the new record showed that he had also moved on.
Someone Great — with its achingly realist take on lost love, friendship and the shifting roles played by the people in your life — shows you that beneath Murphy's irony, wit and wanton provocation lies genuine heart. And then that song's non-rain drenched melancholy fades out…
“Set controls for the heart of the sun”
All My Friends literally begins and metaphorically ends with an insistently addictive driving piano whose delicate little skip when it loops lures you into its jerking rhythm. It gets louder, a fizzy beat is added and in comes Murphy’s plaintive vocals: “That’s how it starts”.
Whatever else happens musically in the rest of the song, from top end beats to gorgeous guitar lines, that piano loop dominates. It’s like the soundtrack to your greatest 3am dancefloor memory that, in reality, was never as glorious as it sounds right now. It’s the hook on which everything else hangs and the weight it carries is monumental.
The piano may loop the same notes over and over, but the lyrics are all about change. They describe a house party a million miles from the previous Daft Punk-starring rave, where the revelers desperately scan the charts for musical inspiration before settling for some classic Pink Floyd:
“We set controls for the heart of the sun / one of the ways that we show our age”
It’s a brilliant characterization of that time in life where going to a party is such a rarity that it becomes a frantic, usually futile quest to restate vitality, reaffirm cool status. Murphy must have watched his friends settle into a dull but satisfying adulthood, while his career took him off the path of his peers and forced him down a road of arrested development:
“You spend the first five years trying to get with the plan and the next five years trying to be with your friends again.”
Yet he is not the boy who never grows old: “when you’re drunk and the kids look impossible tanned you feel older and older.” Where Losing My Edge obsesses over the threat posed by the youth of others, All My Friends is the realization that losing status pales in significance to losing people – “where are your friends tonight?”
If this all sounds terribly depressing and willfully nostalgic then the true genius of the song is that it isn’t. That “set controls for the heart of the sun” line lifts the hairs on the back of your neck with its bold retreat into the warm and familiar. While amidst the lost glances and lonely pleas, Murphy remains without regret: “I wouldn’t trade a single stupid decision for another five years of life.” And when he repeats the words “If I made a fool…” three times, you understand that he is proud of his past, defiantly satisfied and ultimately happy to be wistful.
Meanwhile, the music becomes increasingly epic, getting louder, faster, guitars squealing, beats racing out of control and, of course, that piano pumping the blood through a gloriously living, breathing, all-too-human creation. And then it just stops, leaving nothing but a few whiplash effects fading out like a faint echo of a once great existence.
“Where are your friends tonight?”
LCD Soundsystem made one more album – the excellent This Is Happening – before calling it quits after one last live tour. The band’s final show at Madison Square Garden is brilliantly captured in the documentary film Shut Up and Play the Hits, where the tempo and intensity of All My Friends are ratcheted up superbly.
The film also features interviews with Murphy from the days following but, in truth, these scenes are somewhat self-indulgent. ‘Man no longer in band’ is hardly a cause for such sombre introspection and Murphy is often halting or incoherent on camera.
Fresh insights into the human condition will have to wait until he decides to write songs again. Until then, as LCD Soundsystem, Murphy leaves behind a small but significant body of work and, in All Your Friends, a masterpiece for his (ever-aging) generation.
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If you like this, try:
Losing My Edge
On Repeat
Someone Great
You Wanted a Hit
Go to 83: I Feel Love by Donna Summer
Go to 85: That's Not My Name by The Ting Tings
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