LCD Soundsystem

"Bellhead"!

https://i.imgur.com/xr8iix4.jpeg

I still like and listen to LCD Soundsystem, but wow, Losing my Edge hits differently at 44 than it did at 22.

My mistake I just woke up!!

LCD Soundsystem is such a time/place thing for me, like I discovered that first record when I got into college, Sound of Silver around when I hit legal drinking age, and This is Happening when I was really going out a lot, so all three of those records bring back a lot of (mostly good) memories. But I haven't really been interested in relistening to them.

“Losing My Edge” remains one of my favourite recordings of all time

The later songs that were upthread described as “post-modern remixes of your favourite songs” in fact have all the appeal of the Counting Crows cover of “Big Yellow Taxi” or that recent cover of “Fast Car” or that awful New Radicals cover; yet somehow worse than all of these because people seem to like them? They make me feel something profound, not sadness or anger or boredom but a lack of emotion, like a vacuum of feeling, an overwhelming null

I like “Yeah” tho, too. I listened to the Nike album while working out and it was nice, I liked the instrumental version of “Someone Great”. I never liked “Daft Punk” but I heard it again a month ago and it was better than I remembered.

what songs in particular you referring to?

I have thankfully scrubbed them, but “the song that sounds like “Heroes”” and “the song that sounds like “Needle In The Camel’s Eye”” and others. They were legacy-souring to me, turned me off the band like piss in the soup

which is the one that is a "needle in the camel's eye" pastiche

those could both be "All I Want"

think for that one he at least adds enough new stuff that it stands on its own, also I guess the fact that he was able to ape one of the best songs ever is pretty impressive. the ones that bother me are the two on American Dream which sound like Remain in Light outtakes, particularly since one imitates Belew's very distinct "Born Under Punches" solo. like the one big strike against this band is they copy Talking Heads too much, idk why they decided to do that, especially on an album that's too long as it is

Ya, it was “White Light, White Heat” (aka Drunk Girls)

All I Want is “Heroes” with the guitar part from “Here Come The Warm Jets”

I hate it

I started to hear other covers in other songs that may or may not have been there. That song “Home” sounds like a David Byrne cover to my ears. (Is it? It sounds so much like something). “All My Friends” idk I got it in my head that he was trying to do a synth cover of “Where The Streets Have No Name” and I couldn’t un-U2ify my ears afterward

It’s like when somebody gets disgraced for plagiarism and then you just assume everything they’ve ever written is a lift, I guess

i attempted a discog run with these guys last year. early singles and first album are still great and fun. after that... i really love "someone great." that's it unfortunately

juan maclean, however, nothing but excellence

"home" is definitely inspired by "this must be the place" but it's not blatant enough to annoy me, i like it

the reference points of "all my friends" are pretty obviously new order (specifically "temptation") + eno but that synthesis works very well, it isn't blatantly ripping any one thing

It's been really entertaining the whiplash of sentiment turn on Murphy so completely. Short of someone staining their legacy through non-musical things (Morrissey, dude from Arcade Fire), I can't think of many artists since 2000 that have been turned on like this.

My opinion remains pretty much the same since the start - some incredible stuff and some really turgid stuff.

ugh, "watching the whiplash"

I find it amusing he actually covered "Jump Into the Fire" by Nilsson because when I first heard that song my thought was "ah, that's where LCD got it from"

dunno if "Home" cribs a Byrne song, but I like it better than any solo Byrne I've heard, for what that's worth. there is probably a site out there dedicated to compiling all the LCD references out there, similar to how they do for Daft Punk and Stereolab. the one that surprised me was "Dance Yrself Clean" being mostly cribbed from a very obscure 12 inch someone found, idk why but something about that bothered me. like maybe he thought he could get away with that one. Daft Punk did that a lot too.

ivy., I did the exact same and felt the exact same

I can’t decide if I like or dislike his MES impressions on “Edge” and “Daft Punk”, I think in the end I like it

I need to listen to Juan Mclean, it seems

This 2003 Fader article about the Rapture is interesting because it's kind of right on the cusp, when "House of Jealous Lovers" broke through. DFA here is only discussed as a record label — albeit one with a tremendous amount of input into its artists' releases. Lots of discussion of Murphy and Goldsworthy, but not even a mention of LCD Soundsystem. "The Rapture is DFA's flagship band," lol sure.

https://www.thefader.com/2015/09/17/cover-story-the-rapture-issue-15

idk i still really like the first album + early singles, sound of silver is pretty good, and even this is happening has its moments, just he gets more blatant/less creative with his inspirations as things go on and everything suffers for it

I think of the references and ripoffs sort of like cheeky sampling.

would you like to hear an old iggy pop song with worse vocals and lyrics

Sampling is already cheeky! Sampling is post-modern. Cribbing is not cheeky. I get as bothered on this topic about Schnittke Symphony 1 as I do about “Drunk Girls”

Xp lol otm

early singles and first album are still great and fun. after that... i really love "someone great." that's it unfortunately

― ivy., Tuesday, January 30, 2024 10:20 AM (twenty-two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

juan maclean, however, nothing but excellence

― ivy., Tuesday, January 30, 2024 10:21 AM (twenty-one minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Agree with both of these posts.

Still think "Yeah" is one of the best tracks of the 00s, so I still consider myself a fan of this band

Has he ever talked about ripping off bands in interviews? Like, does he go up to his bandmates and say this one is like David Bowie, or this one is like talking heads?

Writing a new song over a replay of an old song felt more interesting before every big pop song was doing this (or at least including blatant references to big hits of the past). Looking at it charitably, it's not that different from Jamaican "versions" and sometimes results in great songs (sometimes not).

The Dance Yrself Clean / Jamaica Running thing was pretty sus if they didn't credit the songwriters/publishers right off.

Always thought the most effective aspect of LCD was the sense of time and place - the 2000s stuff captures the feel of being ~32. Not music to be played while partying until sunrise but while drinking a couple of beers or glasses of wine and remembering when you were partying until sunrise (and the bands that moved you when you were 22).

Everything I've heard post-reunion (which is not a ton tbf, it's been so bad I'm not going to search out more) has been very going through the motions.

Yeah, I file them along with Sleater-Kinney, or maybe the Pixies. Really liked phase one at the time, no interest in the reunion.

I don't know if the s/t is considered an album, but it's my favorite of theirs. "Daft Punk," "Tribulations," "Beat Connection," "Give It Up," "Losing My Edge," and "Yeah" are all classics. There's a raw energy to those early recordings that captures the magic of their live performances better than the future studio albums.

Not sure what tainted their legacy more: the tedious "last tour/show/residency ever" (which they've done twice or 3x?) or more recently the late-stage crypto/NFT cashgrabs.

All that said, "Beat Connection" is the song I'm always surprised I still like when it comes on shuffle.

I actually just keep getting more into LCD Soundsystem. I enjoyed the first two albums when they were fresh, and I like them even more now.

It definitely helps that I don't have a huge vocabulary with his influences. I don't even WANT to know all the artists he lists in Losing My Edge, etc. Sometimes they're really obvious to me and sometimes they're not. Agree that the one that sounds like Heroes is probably too on the nose and it was a little disappointing when I realized just how hard he was leaning on other artists. However, there are a few where I definitely felt LCD's version was an improvement on the source material; I'm not going to listen to Kraftwerk's Robots, but I love Get Innocuous. Disintegration is one of my favorite Cure songs and Tonite is one of my favorite LCD Soundsystem songs and the similarities don't bother me at all.

The records I listen to most are The Long Goodbye and Electric Lady Sessions. Definitely a band that benefits from the looseness of live performance.

first time I saw them they ended with a 20 minute version of "Yeah", nothing they did the next two times I saw them was anywhere close to that

I made this playlist a few years ago based on a reddit (I think) post that matched up all the This Is Happening songs against the originals. It's pretty interesting hearing them side by side like this

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/58KqaKB2yPO1vJqEzzP83g?si=e29f861113514b6d

It makes its point, since a few of those are absolutely blatant, but imo a couple of those are stretches as direct analogs, ironically because the LCD songs are ripping off several songs at once. For example, "Drunk Girls" reminds me of "Boys Keep Swinging" by Bowie as much as "White Light/White Heat." I don't think "Pow" sounds particularly like "Born Under Punches," and I don't think "Home" sounds like "This Must Be the Place," but both sure as heck sound like the Talking Heads. And so on. I'm surprised he's never been sued, regardless - other acts have for sure been sued for far less - which makes me think he maybe worked something out with various estates and/or friends?

And of course North American Scum =
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2HwmO_GZfzI

the reference points of "all my friends" are pretty obviously new order (specifically "temptation") + eno but that synthesis works very well, it isn't blatantly ripping any one thing

otm, with a Pink Floyd reference thrown in.

I think that's why I always appreciated the band. It's a synthesis. Like, when I listen to, say, bands like the P. Furs, I hear a synthesis of Bowie, VU, Roxy Music and the Pistols. When I hear the JAMC, I hear the Ramones, Phil Spector, Beach Boys, Stooges, etc. I'm not suggesting LCD is on par with either of those acts, or as novel in its synthesizing, but like those others there's more than enough personality that I would never confuse it for its source material. (See also: Zeppelin.)

Also, they were a real gateway drug into dance and electronic music for me, in that there was so much live instrumentation and I could understand what was going on more (this was when I was starting to mess around with making music on a computer but really had no idea what I was doing or how things were made).

I feel like the interpolations are similar - they're never going to sample a record, they don't work like that, they're going to do it with their chosen toolbox. I like that even though it sometimes veers into ripoff territory. It's great when it works.

I made this playlist a few years ago based on a reddit (I think) post that matched up all the This Is Happening songs against the originals. It's pretty interesting hearing them side by side like this

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/58KqaKB2yPO1vJqEzzP83g?si=e29f861113514b6d

― nate woolls, Tuesday, January 30, 2024 12:44 PM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Thanks for this. "The Bus" is a banger.

I don't think "Pow" sounds particularly like "Born Under Punches,"

― Josh in Chicago, Tuesday, January 30, 2024 2:50 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

Is it just the little electric guitar riff every 8 beats?

Nothing much to add except Someone Great is my favourite song of all time. Just rooted itself in me instantly with that hook and all that sadness. Can tell you exactly where I was and what I was doing the first time I heard it. Have so many associations with those first two albums (and yeah I do consider the self titled to be one). Ex of mine actually introduced me to them by putting Never as Tired As When I’m Waking Up on a mix CD for me which, in retrospect? Not that representative of their style!

s/t is totally an album; i thought the singles were collected as a "bonus disk" but the first disc was a "proper" album

"Someone Great" will always remind me of Bumble and I dedicate that song to him.

M4rk Cr4ig (aka Bimble) RIP

*Bimble

Spell check strikes again

I saw James Murphy creeping around The Four Horseman, the restaurant he owns in Brooklyn, when I met a buddy for brunch. He did look as if he'd lost his edge.