Plus: Amy Winehouse and Fujiya & Miyagi
Wednesday April 4, 2007
LCD Soundsystem, Sound of Silver
[March 20, 2007, DFA Records]
When I first heard LCD Soundsystem’s intoxicating 2005 self-titled album, it was at a party full of sweaty college students and keg beer. Since this was more or less the primordial soup from which LCD front man James Murphy’s indie rock dance tracks emerged in the first place, that first listen felt especially appropriate. When the punchy bass of “Losing My Edge” ripped through the apartment, it appeared that Murphy had done it: He had created the soundtrack for a moment.
This is what great DJs do, and Murphy, a dance-rocker who composes, sings, and plays guitar, is at a fundamental level a damn good DJ. It was with this in mind that I approached LCD’s new LP, Sound of Silver: a tight, focused album that flirts with greatness, but can’t manage to reproduce the messy splendor of the previous album. Put another way, it’s good, but it doesn’t make me want to peel off my v-neck undershirt and douse myself with André.
But maybe it’s not supposed to. Silver leads off with the pulsing, layered “Get Innocuous,” which features Murphy doing his best David-Bowie-circa-Low impression. The track builds, but as it does, it somehow becomes more sluggish and monolithic. On the whole, Silver seems denser than LCD’s previous offerings, and that can get suffocating on the dance floor.
Where “Get Innocuous” gets dragged down, “North American Scum,” the first single from the album, soars. Coming in at a slim five minutes and 26 seconds (this is short by LCD standards), “North American Scum” manages to articulate a whole theory of geo-political hipsterdom, pitting North American “kids” against their counterparts across the pond. Lyrically, Murphy often pursues such themes (see: “Losing My Edge”), and true to form, “North American Scum” comes off as both heartfelt and hysterical, a generational call to arms.
Strangely, the best of LCD’s recent material isn’t on Sound of Silver, but was released on a compilation called Gommagang 3, as a collaboration between Murphy, the DJ Munk, and WhoMadeWho. The song is called “Kick Out the Chairs,” and if you don’t have it already, download it. I suppose it’s a stretch to call it an LCD track, since the Danish outfit WhoMadeWho makes a significant contribution, but Murphy provides the lead vocals and bandmate Nancy Whang’s whispery backup reminds me of a girl getting in really close to talk at a crowded club. Whoever gets to claim the credit, the song is off the chain.
So, considered alongside “Kick Out the Chairs,” it seems clear that LCD made a conscious effort to produce an album that wasn’t just a party rocker, but could stand up to repeated listening. It could also be that, like the self-titled, Sound of Silver is meant to be paired with a moment: something, as the title would suggest, sleek and shiny, but fleeting. I’ll be on the lookout for it.
—Josh Malmuth, Northwestern University
Amy Winehouse, Back to Black
[March 13, 2007 (US), Universal Republic Records]
Coming off her 2004 U.K.-only debut Take the Box, Back to Black represents British songstress Amy Winehouse’s attempt to separate from the neo-jazz pack of Norah Jones and Keren Ann by melding the sound of Motown with the attitude of a foul-mouthed party girl. The much-lauded single “Rehab”—repetitive and droning—is one of the weaker resulting songs. Thankfully, there are plenty of other catchy, bluesy, horns-a-blazing tracks on Back to Black. It’s true that Winehouse seems to be trying very hard to channel black soul singers from Billie Holliday to Lauryn Hill, but her voice is so rich and distinctive that she gets away with adopting a meme that evokes mid-20th century Chicago more than early 21st century London. And the lyrics are all Winehouse’s own. On the perfectly kitschy “Me & Mr. Jones,” she whines to a lover, “What kind of fuckery are we? Nowadays you don’t mean dick to me.” And when she isn’t being put-upon by an out-of-line man, Winehouse is an all-around bad girl, from refusing rehab to thinking guiltily about her lover at the moment of, um, climax, with another man.
Winehouse trips up on forgettable down-tempo tracks like “Wake up Alone” and “Some Unholy War.” “Just Friends” is an ill-conceived melding of reggae instrumentals and 1970s soul vocals. But the tear-jerker “Love is a Losing Game,” the swinging “He Can Only Hold Her,” and the title track are instant classics.
—Dana Goldstein
Fujiya & Miyagi, Transparent Things
[January 23, 2007, DD&B Communications]
It’s quite a statement to begin your album with a droning, steady beat that is immediately recognizable as a hat-tip to your acknowledged influences, but that’s exactly what the British trio Fujiya & Miyagi did in channeling the Krautrock outifit Neu! from the very beginning. Neu! was part of an experimental rock movement, also including Can and Kraftwerk, and Agitation Free, that arose primarily in Germany in the late ’60s and early ’70s. Paying tribute to the movement’s diverse styles has been in vogue with one group or another ever since, and over the last few years, its taken hold in the indie world. But Fujiya & Miyagi’s aren’t so easy to pin down. For one thing, despite the name, they’re not Japanese. (They confess as much in “Photocopier” by chanting “We were just pretending to be Jap-o-nese.”) And the Neu!-ish opening belies the diversity of the beat-driven indie-pop to come in the album.
Transparent Things is unexpectedly good running music—unexpected both because Krautrock is not known for its kinesis and because I’m surprised I was running in the first place. Its lyrics can be a little absurd and self-conscious. “Collarbone,” for instance, is all about a guy who thinks he needs new shoes to hang out with some woman. The album lags during the less exciting breathy tracks toward the end. But as far as I’m concerned, so long as you can get a guy to dance like this, you’ve done something good:
—Graham Webster
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