This Is Happening
LCD Soundsystem
DFA, 2010

I feel like I made a band that was about how I felt about music, as an argument, and I feel like I've kind of explained myself and it's time to do something else. – James Murphy

Pop music is, by definition, popular, i.e. intended for mass consumption by the widest audience possible, the common people, the rabble. From great heights, the gods of classical and jazz snicker down, comfortable with the knowledge that they are art with a capital “A,” untainted by the superficiality of whatever chewing gum melodies are straining car speakers at three to five minute intervals. But when a pop musician enters into their courts and says that his band, his music, is an argument, these gods frown at what is suspiciously beginning to sound like Art. James Murphy, the curtained wizard behind LCD Soundsystem, has asked for the stringent scrutiny of critics with statements like the above. And with the release of This is Happening, LCD’s latest and rumored last album, this seems like the right time to give his project a long and hard look.

But there’s a problem. His statement isn’t all that easy to evaluate. And if it isn’t clear what he’s talking about, then it’s hard to say anything in response. Murphy claims his band is an argument that accurately communicates his ‘feelings’ about music. I’m not one to argue—it’s difficult, if not impossible, to dispute personal claims about representational accuracy, especially if what’s being depicted are ‘feelings’. The real critical task, then, is not deciding whether Murphy’s claim is true, but what the hell he’s even suggesting. A band as an argument? An argument that communicates feelings about music? Murphy’s claim isn’t so outlandish as much as poorly articulated, which is understandable—he’s a musician, not a writer. Here’s what this critic thinks: Murphy is making the case for the serious love of excellent pop music. His testimony is LCD Soundsystem. His argument is the music. The main points are made in his numerous allusions and references.

LCD Soundsystem’s long-extending chain of references appear even before one tears the vinyl’s plastic wrap. The album art depicts Murphy in a simple black suit and slim tie, contorted to mimic a Robert Long painting. The reference? Glenn Branca’s artwork for his album, The Ascension, released in 1981 on the legendary 99 Records label. In interviews Murphy will sometimes speak fondly of the label, citing its importance to his growth as a serious listener of music, not to mention as a musician. Many people probably aren’t familiar with 99 Records. But Murphy’s appropriation of the image argues that they should be. If only to appreciate further where Murphy is coming from as a musician. Because to understand this is to understand his argument, at least part of it.

While discovering a superficial citation like this is entertaining, the real revelation comes from hearing the various allusions in the music itself. For example, after the studio chatter ceases and the drums start 24 seconds into “All I Want,” one of This Is Happening’s strongest songs, the educated listener hears homage to Robert Fripp’s guitar work on the Bowie classic, “Heroes.” As in “Heroes,” sustained guitar riffing functions as the song’s backbone, while Murphy, ever the architect, steadily builds around its shifting tones. He sings candidly about the weariness of aging, a shtick he’s perfected: “you’ve been gone for too long/to put in the time/but it’s too late to make it strong.” Little quiet doo-wop style mm-la-la-la-las hover low in the mix as polyps of synths gradually cluster and multiply. Then, with the synths shrieking behind him as the “Heroes” homage continues, Murphy moans for anyone to “take [him] home.” The final minute, the climax, is testimony to Murphy’s past life as a sound engineer.

For a climax to be this effective each layer has to be distinct and yet seamlessly integrated – Murphy knows that, and now so does the listener. The message is clear: excellent music demands excellent sound engineering, the latter being arguably as important as the former in the production of an album.

Moving from Bowie to Byrne now, a listen to “Home” provides further clues. Cued by the incessant wood-block chatter and Afropop percussion, the listener knows that for Murphy, “Home” is a tribute to David Byrne and the Talking Heads. And as if the music wasn’t enough to prove it, Murphy takes things a step further and riffs on the lyrics from the peerless “This Must Be the Place (Naïve Melody).” From Byrne’s mouth and pen we had the uncharacteristically sincere and simple “Home is where I want to be/But I guess I’m already there”; Murphy, smugly cool, gives us “Yeah no one ever knows what you’re talking about/So I guess you’re already there.” Nerd-fans like Murphy catch the reference and nod, coolly smug.

Considering Murphy’s careful references to Bryne in his music and lyrics, and his allusion to “Naïve Melody,” a song about love as homecoming, one might sense that, for Murphy, music is a sort of home. Carefully build to the crescendo, hit all the right notes, get the sound crisp, and a song becomes a home, and hearing it, a homecoming.

What sets James Murphy apart isn’t his love for music and respect for other musicians. Instead, what does sequester him in increasingly smaller circles is the seriousness he brings to the art of music in the fullest sense of the phrase. People can name drop – LCD Soundsystem’s first song, “Losing My Edge,” is a seven-minute epic centered on the practice – but few can borrow so well that a homage becomes endearing instead of remaining embarrassing or obnoxious. Fans of 70s new wave bands, usually don’t get far beyond owning a few ticket stubs and posters. Murphy not only appears to have digested thoroughly all the important 70s new wave groups, but also to have incorporated them into a pastiche that, rather than being strictly smug, is also affecting. “Home” isn’t just a vehicle for a Talking Heads reference – it is a song that clearly wants the listener to feel something more than just the elitist pleasure of catching a nod to a band. That is good, careful musicianship. And that’s the head-smackingly simple argument. LCD Soundsystem has been and is about the serious love of excellent pop music. The argument looks like this:

1. Listen seriously to music. Be aware of the canon.
2. Understand that you are operating in the wake of the canon, so when you steal, steal from the best.
3. Under no circumstances should the success of a song be divorced from the very precise science of sound engineering

Maybe all of this could be summed up with the directive: be a geek. Or, perhaps, be more like Steve Albini, which, admittedly, is just an obscure reference, just the sort of thing James Murphy would not approve of.

Ross Scarano lives and writes in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.