I am almost overwhelmingly intrigued by LCD Soundystem. James Murphy seems untouchable, I read about him and I feel like he can’t be human. The world he created with this project is incredibly far removed from anything I know, from any phenomenon I’ve ever been part of, from any fandom I’ve ever belonged to. What he does is not something I fully understand. I adore the tracks I’ve heard, the ones essential to recent pop culture – “Dance Yrself Clean” and “oh baby” – but my knowledge of the genre, of the records, of everything in between, don’t extend past that. I tend to keep my distance from what I don’t know. But now my desire to understand and to insert myself into this brooding, painful/joyful atmosphere is getting to be too much. And I had to do it at some point. Curiosity is getting the better of me.
I did not expect to adore this record as much as I do now that I’ve heard it. Dance music often feels inaccessible to me, completely out of the realm of what I know and understand about music. Far away from what I connect to. But I love this, I love how it feels, I love how long it stretches itself out, I love that it understands how much space it has in the world and that it strives to take up every centimetre of it. It’s repetitive. It’s drawn out. The words hit and I feel them deep deep deep, even when they don’t seem like they should have any depth to them. Even the noises have meaning. It’s all rounded out. It’s all full. I get the sense if there was an extra note added anywhere the entire thing would burst and collapse and disappear.
I knew “Drunk Girls” was my kind of song as soon as I heard it. It’s punchy, it could mean nothing, the entire point of it is to be catchy and danceable and something to sing along to. I love “I Can Change,” how desperate and loving it sounds all at once, how honest it is about the fact that those two sentiments are so often tied together. I love “Somebody’s Calling Me,” the simplicity and the repetition of the line Somebody’s calling me to be my girl. I love “Home.” According to Genius it’s a nod to “This Must Be The Place” by Talking Heads, which is objectively the best love song ever written, and that makes me love it even more.
Maybe I loved this record because even though it’s dance music it still feels human and it’s still so meaningful and it still has an edge that pushes it into this unknown territory where everything’s allowed and anything can happen. It’s interesting. It’s an hour and twenty minutes long and I listened to the whole thing straight through and I never felt bored. I just wanted it to keep going. And those are the best records. The kind I can never get enough of. The kind that could continue on into forever.
Babbleogue. 