My Taste in Music is Way Better Than Your Taste in Music
________

[Main]

[Reviews]

[Features]

[Albums]

[Wanted]

[Top 50]

[Guestbook]
________

tommo

at

ucc

dot

asn

dot

au

________



LCD Soundsystem
Sound of Silver

Released in 2007

7.8/10

Styles
Electronica
Dance
Rock

Song Highlights
North American Scum
Someone Great
All My Friends

I have to admit, I never really liked LCD Soundsystem's self-titled debut. To me, the music felt entirely too thin and lacking in creativity, and even the big singles "Daft Punk is Playing at My House" and "Tribulations" - the album's highpoints according to most - fell quite flat for me. This year's Sound of Silver, on the other hand, has been a very pleasant surprise. James Murphy's songwriting has massively improved, fufilling on the promise of the sparse glimpses of potential I saw in that debut. For the most part, the songs here are gripping, alternatingly poignant and hilarious, highly memorable and extremely catchy.

Opening track "Get Innocuous" is a great choice to start the album. It's an entirely solid, likeable, albeit somewhat-repetitive floor-shaker. It feels like a very appropriate pick, strong enough to kickstart the album but holding back just enough to leave the listener wanting more.

Thankfully, "more" is something that is well-and-truly delivered, as "Time to Get Away" opens up a four-track run that is pure, electronica bliss. "Time to Get Away" itself is a great deal of fun, with it's stop-start beats and Murphy's giddy faux-falsetto making for a song loaded with wicked humour and cheeky turns-of-phrase. When Murphy sings "It's time to get away .... from you!", those last two words ring with so much smirking attitude that it's impossible not to smile.

This light mood is continued on "North American Scum", the chorus of which is made up of a near-screamed "Whoa ho ho ho!", which well and truly delivers the album's biggest (and most sing-along-to-able) vocal hook. Murphy's lovable, totally ludicrous delivery make the song a resounding success - easily one of the year's best party tracks, if not one of its best overall.

However, it's not until "Someone Great", a contemplative mid-tempo piece that feels like the break-up to "Such Great Heights'" soaring romance, that the album reaches its pinnacle. The song is a mastepiece of lyrical content, songcraft and electronic musicianship, that gives the album its first, undeniably-powerful emotional spark. Murphy opens the song with the painful realisation of "I wish that we could talk about it / But then, that's the problem", leading the listener through a whirlwind of self-reflection and realisation, leading into the exquisite chorus of "When someone great is gone / We're safe, for the moment." Murphy has never written anything this good before, and it brings Sound of Silver to a beautifully melancholy apex.

Big single "All My Friends" rounds out the powerhouse quartet. It's another brilliant piece of moody, restrained electronica that sees Murphy delving into the areas of friendship and shared experience, particularly with regards to growing into young adulthood, the need for adventure, the harbouring of regrets and the fear of abandonment.

Unfortunately, at this point Sound of Silver hits a lull and loses a very sizable portion of its magic, and it all boils down to poor sequencing. The next three tracks are (by far) the album's weakest. "Us v Them" features a solid 3 minutes of great melody, inexplicably sandwiched between 3 minute slabs of mind-numbingly repetitive beats and chanted vocals. "Watch the Tapes" is decent, but quite unremarkable and forgetable. "Sound of Silver" certainly has some potential for enjoyment - it's a decent rave track, but if you're the sitting-and-listening type, it's spoken word loop of "Sound of Silver talk to me / Makes you want to feel like a teenager / Until you remember the feelings of a real-life emotional teenage / Then you think again" goes from humourous to grating somewhere along the way to its twentieth iteration.

Thankfully the album winds up strongly with "New York I Love You", the closest Murphy has ever gotten to recording a straight-up indie-rocker. The stripped back instrumentation (predominantly piano) bring his limited vocals into the light, and the massive guitar solo will sound a bit overdone to some listeners, but there's enough charisma and likeable vocal-phrasing to make the song a winner.

It's clear that there are a generous handful of gems to be heard on Sound of Silver, but with almost all of them grouped together in the album's first half, it ends up feeling a bit lop-sided, and some will find it hard to see much point in listening on thereafter. Poor sequencing always feels like a petty, minor complaint, but I have no doubt that with a re-tooled tracklisting this could've been a solid 8.5/10. As it is, we're left with a 7.8 that see-saws between brilliance and frustration. It's definitely worth checking out, but be prepared for a second-half letdown.