LCD Soundsystem - This Is Happening

_____“Nintendo 64, I played "Goldeneye". Bought the whole system just to play "Goldeneye"”. I wasn’t all that into LCD Soundsystem until I read this quote from James Murphy, the man behind it all. The height of my musical experience of them was Daft Punk Is Playing At My House being played at people’s houses. Obviously I regularly hear about North American Scum on the radio, but that whole Tiger Woods saga has dragged on for far too long at this stage.
___But the point is, that I grossly, grossly misjudged James Murphy, and consequently LCD Soundsystem. Everybody and anybody who can still remember the ins and outs of classic levels such as Facility, Bunker, Frigate, Bunker II, and Cradle, in all their 64-bit beauty, is worth paying attention to. So I did. And, I suppose I liked it. Sound Of Silver didn’t give me quite the level of unimaginable pleasure as described by basically every single music review I read, but that’s not to say I’m not kicking myself for not giving it a chance sooner. Their self-titled debut sparked similar regret-inspired acts of self-harm.
___So it was just my luck when, just as I start to get into them, James Murphy announces that this, their third album, would be their last. Although, he did promise that LCD Soundsystem would be going anything but quietly.

_____Obviously following such dramatic news, emotional LCD fans across the globe simply couldn’t wait for This Is Happening. It’s May 17th release just couldn’t come quick enough. So, since that date wasn’t working out, they decided they’d have it now. As always, the internet was more than happy to oblige.
___Oddly enough I haven’t heard any reaction to it so far. At first, I couldn’t figure why this was so, but then after each consecutive listen to the album, it became clearer and clearer. You wouldn’t go telling all your friends if you discovered that a chocolate cake and a blonde bombshell were placed in a hidden room every Monday at midday now would you? No, because that would mean sharing, and nobody likes sharing.
___So I suppose it’s understandable that nobody has been shouting from the rooftops about This Is Happening. Because it isn’t anything like chocolate cake and a blonde bombshell. It’s like chocolate cake, a blonde bombshell, and what I think may be LCD Soundsystem’s best album yet.

_____They haven’t changed all that much in terms of the music, it’s still instantly recognisable as that fantastic LCD sound, but there’s a certain special feel to this album that its predecessors lacked. For example, the opening track, the flawless Dance Yrself Clean, could not set the tone for this album more perfectly. Its laidback three minute intro saying that they’ve taken their time with this record, the other six minutes screaming that it’s resulted in some of their best stuff to date.
___The album is has been stuffed with all sorts of wonderful, wonderful tracks. The Sound Of Silver-esque One Touch will entrance you; the fiercely funky Pow Pow will hypnotise you; and You Wanted A Hit will drug you, take you home, and have its sick and beautiful way with you every time you hear it. All these stand out for me as songs that would waltz into any LCD Soundsystem Top 10, but I can’t say I have any complaints with Murphy’s choice for the debut single. Because if I know anything to be true, it’s that when I’m standing in pit for the last band of my Leeds weekend and this song draws to a close, I will be higher than any amount of bath salts could ever take me.



_____The more I think about it, the more sure I am that I prefer this to their two previous releases, but it’s not without the odd questionable moment. Well, two to be exact. When placed in an album of such a standard as This Is Happening, personally, Somebody’s Calling Me doesn’t quite cut it. And, although still a quality track, All I Wanted just isn’t as good as the non-existent Strokes’ song it sounds so ridiculously similar to.
___However, that’s just about all the bad I have to say about this album, and it’s not really that bad. Just that one track doesn’t rock my world quite as hard as the rest of the album, and that another is slightly disappointing purely because when it comes on, I think This Is It has come on, and one is obviously going to be sad upon realising that This Is [Sadly, Not] It. Once one gets over this, however, it’s actually a brilliant song.

_____LCD Soundsystem have announced a string of European festival dates for this summer, and I know that this has more than a few of you excited. Which is why I’m delighted to say that, for me, This Is Happening is a stunning success. While Drunk Girls seems to be one tickling most people’s taste buds at the moment, I’m going to sign off with my unquestionable favourite off the album. While James and company may be leaving us forever, this track will never die. For me personally, anyways.



A2

Obituaries

_____Nelly Furtado once melodically pondered, “Why must all good things come to an end?”. Being a stupid b*tch, she made us listen to her whine on about it for the torturous duration of the song without giving us anything even approaching an educated guess, let alone a concise answer. The answer, as it happens, is simple: because there isn’t enough space on my iPod for it.
___I’ve moaned before about the disadvantages associated with opting for a slimmer iPod, and unfortunately, with the release of numerous eagerly-anticipated albums in recent weeks (LCD Soundsystem, Crystal Castles, and Foals the ones you’re most likely to be hearing about from myself in the coming weeks), these pains have seldom been more heartfelt. I’ve had no choice but to part ways, at least for the time being, with many albums I really wish I didn’t. They will never be forgotten, except in the case of The Virgins, not sure how they managed to last this long on the strength of one single track…

_____In no particular order, except for alphabetical, are listed below the albums I must say goodbye to.

Animal Collective - Feels

This isn’t actually through any fault of the album itself, I quite like most of the songs on it, but seriously, if Animal Collective are in question, you’d be mad to listen to anything other than Merriweather Post Pavillion. Although I always thought the track below would fit so much better on MPP…



Basement Jaxx - Remedy

As hard as I tried, and hard I certainly tried, I could never quite justify to myself having 170mb of music from what we all know to be the most hit-and-miss band of all time. That said, some of their hits are absolutely timeless.



The Crystal Method - Divided By The Night

Following a brief love affair between myself and the American electronic duo last summer, what started as a romantic three albums, complete with B-sides has since slowly but surely diminished to dull indifference. This will be the last remnant of our short-lived time together to be severed. However, it’s not exactly The Crystal Method themselves which I’ve been clinging onto until now, but more the heavenly voice of Emily Haines on a track I will genuinely miss.



Master Shortie - A.D.H.D.

This album is a fair bit of fun, and if it didn’t make me cringe just a little bit every time I listen to it, then it probably wouldn’t be on this list, but, as much as I’m sure you’ll enjoy tracks like Dead End and Rope Chain, you will cringe. One of the songs actually made it into Skins back when it was cool, but, much like we’re all a bit too old for Skins, we’re all just a bit too old...



Muse - Dead Star/In Your World

Lolz only kidding.


Muse- Dead Star
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The Virgins - The Virgins

Like I said, I don’t actually like this band. I don’t know why they were on my iPod.





Parting is such sweet sorrow.

Plan B - The Defamation of Strickland Banks

_____Right now, you’re all going, yuck, Plan B, he’s a filthy, foul-mouthed scumbag who’s entire fan base consists of similar filthy, foul-mouthed scumbags who reside in the north of England, and yes, that was my first impression of this surprisingly London-born singer/rapper too. I mean, when you open your debut album with such obscenity as Kidz, then you’re only slightly narrowing your demographic, and by slightly I mean ridiculously. Seriously, that song contains some of the most vile lyrics I’ve ever heard; “virgin pussy getting fucked ‘till it’s raw”. Like, even listening to that on my iPod I feel uncomfortable… So yeah, despite my love for No More Eatin’, can’t say I had too much good to say about Who Needs Actions When You Got Words, partly down to the fact that it’s tricky to say anything at all when your in such a state of taken-aback-at-such-vulgarity-ness, but mainly due to it’s being quite terrible.
___Yet somehow, after the most shocking of first impressions, Ben Drew has actually miraculously managed to turn me full circle. And I’m fully confident that by the end of this review, he’ll have at least eradicated any prejudices you all most likely had against him at the start of it. So, what did it for me? Well, there were a number of consecutive factors which gradually won me over to the B-side. The first was actually courtesy of Hadouken!, who did a pretty nice job or remixing No More Eatin’, which lead me to the original, which is pure gold.
___Then the second, and possibly most noteworthy, was two kick-ass collaborations with my sole indulgence in dubstep, Chase & Status. Written for that Harry Brown movie, End Credits showed us a Plan B that we hadn’t really seen before, eerily emotional, powerful, and moving, and most striking, one that can sing. But it was his first collaboration with them that really grabbed my attention. In Pieces beautifully combined his surprisingly soothing singing with the harsh, high-octane rapping, as such, that we heard so much of on his first album. It also had arguably one of the best videos I’ve ever seen.


Chase And Status feat. Plan B - Pieces
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_____Finally, circa three weeks ago, having already eaten, digested, and passed my “this scouser is shit” hat, came Stay Too Long, the first single from his forthcoming album, titled The Defamation of Strickland Banks. Upon hearing this addictive absolute gem of a track, I completely forgot about the vulgarity, the British slim-shady-ey, the suckishness of his debut album. This, an even more so the rest of the album, clearly ain’t like anything from him which we heard previously. He has completely evolved on this album, but he’s done so without losing his unique musical identity. He’s not trying to impress the local shmad lads with rude words on this record, he’s gotten over his Mama issues, and he’s just making slick music. Most impressively, he’s matured. Listen to tracks like Hard Times, or my track-of-the-album Welcome To Hell, and not only will you be unable to believe they’re coming from the same guy as did Sick 2 Def, but you won’t even hear a single swear word in the process.
___However, I do still have a few criticisms of this album. Well, only one, but it’s a big one. It’s obvious that Plan B has distanced himself from the dark, intimidating,-songs-about-anal-sex corner of the musical room, but on some of the tracks he’s been so caught up in getting away from that corner, that he’s strayed into the slightly-sort-of-camp corner. Listening to Love Goes Down, and all I can say to myself is that he sounds really like Daniel Merriweather. And that’s a really bad, a horribly bad thing. It’s a similar story for Writing’s On The Wall, only that’s actually a decent song, so although it sounds like he’s singing it post-castration, it’s half decent. The chilling yet catchy She Said may seem to fall into the same category, but its non-gayness levels are salvaged by some really smooth rap verses. Any ambiguity about his sexual orientation, however, is banished every time I hear this charming particular track. Fun fact: that’s actually Effy from Skins in the video. Yeh, the one who’s getting it on with Drew in the lift. And yeh, the one who’s 17.



_____Now, it might interest to know that all of the above was written over a month and a half ago. See, for some reason, seven tracks were leaked ages ago, back when Tiger Woods was a golfer and Ashley Cole was a player, but the remaining six were nowhere to be found. At first I thought this was most peculiar, but now, upon listening to I Know A Song, I’m beginning to think it might have been one of the greatest business moves since Mr. Quinn’s billion euro gamble on Anglo-Irish in that parallel universe where it wasn’t retarded.
___Through giving the general public a taste of some genuinely superb music such as Stay Too Long and She Said, a certain percentage of those would pre-order the album, securing for Drew approx. 100% more sales than he would have achieved had fans fully known exactly what they were buying. Of course, my estimation that not one of these albums would have been shifted assumes that consumers have full knowledge of what they are buying, ie that Trading In My Cigarettes should have been titled Trading In My Talent For A Piano In Order To Write A Really Bad Song. And also that they act rationally, and in reality actively avoid such pains in life such as disease, torture, and Free.
___But as we all know, we’re not rational in the slightest, and not knowing what to expect on an album is half the fun. And that’s why, on the whole, this album ain’t half bad. The dreadful tracks prescribed above are more than made up for by the opposite of dreadful tracks prescribed above-er, and some of the poorer songs are salvaged by some catchy rapping, What You Gonna Do a perfect example. Also, the brilliant string-work in The Recluse and Darkest Place turns two average songs into so much more.

_____My final should really take nothing into account but how I feel after listening to the album right through, which isn’t exactly ecstatic. Yes, there is some amazing stuff on the album, but there’s also a few shockers, and he really does sound like Daniel Merriweather worryingly frequently… But I can’t help but compare this to his literally disturbing debut, and when I do, I’m figuratively blown away.

B3

Because There's A High Probability You're Bored.

_____We all know full well that studying is for losers. So I figured you’d all have nothing better to do than listen to some pleasant music that I’ve become quite attached to in the previous year or so. And hey, even the losers amongst you can listen to it while studying, so everyone wins!

_____Let’s get started so, cause I know you all have loads of alcohol and soft drugs to be ingesting and time is of the essence, and I’m going to screw that save the best for last malarkey, and introduce to you firstly a band who is second only to an Australian hard-electronica duo, whom you’ll be hearing more about before the holidays are out, in terms of bands I regularly rack my brains as to how I am going to see them perform their truly unique sound live, loud, and soon.
___Three Trapped Tigers are like nothing you have ever heard before. They are harsh, brash, kick-assh trio from somewhere in the UK that I have repeatedly half-heartedly recommended to a few friends. This track is sort of sublime, that EP is about as good as group sex, and whatever video is practically what one experiences after consuming copious amounts of horse tranquillisers. But now, following the third mind blowing of mine in as many EPs of theirs, I’ve decided that this can’t go on any longer, as I simply won’t be able to sleep at night knowing that some of you haven’t heard what I have heard.
___They’ve been racking up the critical acclaim from all over; just there I was linked to a site called Drowned in Sound, being told it was the top dog for new music, and who would have known, second link on the page is one to a video of a full live Three Trapped Tigers performance which I am currently drooling over. While I do that however, I suppose I best clue you into what exactly we’re talking about here. The problem is I don’t know which song to go for… I can’t seem to find a thirteen-sided coin about my person, so I guess I’ll just have to let the Law of YouTube decide and pick the most popular. Yes, I quite like how that approach turns out.



_____As you can see, these guys don’t really have song titles. Or lyrics. Or, it would seem, any shred of sanity whatsoever. But by golly does it work. In all of their songs, you can just hear the passion and the energy, and most importantly, the freedom. These lads aren’t driven by money or big record deals (they’re signed to some shoddy label called bloodandbiscuits, and no, I have never heard of them either), hell I doubt these guys even realize that 87% of pretty women will sleep with them if they simply murmur anything about them being in a band.
___And that is the real beauty of Three Trapped Tigers; they’re a no holds barred, unrestricted, unrelenting machine pumping out jaw-droopingly awesome track after jaw-droopingly awesome track. And 1 right through to 13 are more than perfect examples of just how smoothly this particular machine is operating, and hopefully not shutting down anytime soon.

_____Well these next bands unfortunately look nothing more than mediocre in comparison to TTT, most bands do, but trust me, simply allow for a five minute breather after each listening of 1, and you’ll find the music you love stops sounding so insufficient quickly enough.
___So up next is New York’s answer to Empire of the Sun; an almost-cringey electro-pop band that dress sort of funny. Sorry, dress really funny, and their lyrics are kinda peculiar too. As a result, Boy Crisis didn’t exactly get on great with the critics. Bit of a critic crisis you might say…? Their Wikipedia page even refers to one such eating by Pitchfork, and to be honest, I think they were hard done by. Because sure, they’re are the height of non-grooviness, and yeh, they’re about as far from original as sliced bread is close to it, but come on, can you honestly listen to this and tell me you didn’t enjoy it even a tiny little bit?



_____No you can’t, because that would mean you were some sort of cold-blooded reptile, and they don’t use the internet. Ok granted their debut album, Tulipomania, or so it was supposed to be called; think they might have had to change it for legal douche reasons or something, didn’t blow me away, or anyone for that matter, cause it’s quite average, but some of the tracks are absolute gems. Others are more like the plastic ones you get in Kinder Surprises, but hey it’s diamonds rarity that makes them so special eh?
___And believe me, L’Homme is something very special indeed. Fountain of Youth to a lesser extent also, but still well worth checking out. After that, yeh things start becoming a lot less shiny. There is one or two others that certainly aren’t bad, but none that quite provokes the almost disturbingly pleasurable experience quite like Dressed To Digress.

_____And last, and probably least in this case, is weird French music courtesy of Naive New Beaters. I’m not going to go on for long about this crowd, cause while I do love them, they’re sort of hard to explain and even harder to sell. It really shouldn’t sound as good as it does, but honestly, listen to it twice through on a boring bus journey through Austria’s mountains because your iPod’s so low on battery it will die if you turn the screen on and you’ll never look back.
___I know where I discovered this band, they were the second band on the bill at Festival Pantiero last summer, but to be honest I’m not sure if I actually saw them… See while Live Good is awfully appeasing, so is drinking Desperados on the beach… Regardless though, these guys may very well be for you. Chances are they won’t be, they would be far bigger than they are if they appealed to everyone like they do to me, but give them a go next time your bored on high altitude public transport in Austria, and you never know…