Categories : Electronica, Music Reviews, Rock + Pop.
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Rating: 5 / 5 Reviewer: Michelle Kennedy |
Just to get it over with: the one (albeit small) downside to the exceptional This is Happening is that there is no song for secret summer kisses. James Murphy accounts for every possible circumstance of bad behaviour save for that one: bad choices on dark, hot, summer nights with people you’re never suppose to kiss. This is not a sexy album. Brilliant? Yes. Funny? Certainly. But never ever sexy.
Now on to the good stuff…
Here’s what we know about James Murphy and his stellar output over the last five or six years as LCD Soundsystem. He is smart-whip smart, hilarious, deeply cynical and joyfully ironic. He has been the hipster kingpin and never far from the top of the Pitchfork news feed since New York started bringing him down in 2007. Not since the release of Sound of Silver has there been such a hotly anticipated electronic release. Even label mates Hot Chip can’t compete with Murphy’s hype. It’s possible that for the first time in hipster history every blogger, music nerd and member of the unwashed masses can agree: This is Happening will likely top many a “Best of…” list at the end of 2010.
And they will all be right. This is Happening is fantastic. It really, really is. It’s packed full of genre-defying beats; surprise mid-song shifts in tone, tempo and mood; stunning emotional honesty (“I Can Change” is heartbreaking!); and an outlook that is gently acerbic and blindly hopeful while still appropriately unsure of the future. This is intelligent dance music for a new generation. Murphy isn’t hiding behind his technology or making music for moog nerds. Instead, he is jumping up and down in front of his audience, right there with them in the mess: a wink, a nudge and pair of tight white jeans.
While ‘Drunk Girls’ promises to be the hit of the summer, ‘Pow Pow’ is the stand alone, best song on the album. Murphy is a pop-music everyman. He acknowledges multiple perspectives and that the world is not at its best, that we are not at our best. “Be honest with yourself,” he says, “How much time do you waste everyday?” But there is hope. With Murphy there is always hope. Obama, good music, good drugs and good friends. Pitchfork’s Nitsuh Abebe puts it best, “It seems to me that most of how Murphy is trying to connect with us is by suggesting we know just as much as him—we share the knowing joke as equals”
Keep your ears open – as summer approaches and the sun gets warm This is Happening will be blasting from car windows and keeping patios pulsing well into the long summer nights.
