LCD Soundsystem - LCD Soundsystem (2005)

the first track on each of the album's two discs references Daft Punk. of course this is a great album.



this is one of the few albums (up there with the White Album, Drukqs, etc.) that i think truly deserves to be two discs long. like the Beatles and Aphex Twin, James Murphy (he basically is LCD Soundsystem) just had too many things to do. the Beatles wanted to do surf rock, punk rock, folk rock, and even weird sound experiments. Richard D. James wanted drum & bass, eerie minimal piano pieces, ambient techno, and even a 30-second sample of his parents wishing him a happy birthday.

what does Murphy want? he wants to make you dance. there's slow stuff, fast stuff, soft stuff, hard stuff. something for everyone, as long as everyone likes to dance. an acid disco garage house pop psychedelic punk rock medley, LCD Soundsystem's debut/self-titled album is an electronic dance music masterpiece, still the best LCD five years later.

i'm not going to say anything about the music though. i'm not really going to say much anything actually. i just want to share some of this album's amazing lyrics, usually the least important factor of any music to me.

i'm really easy to please lyrics-wise. you can repeat "ooh baby the music sounds better with you, love might bring us back together" for seven minutes and i'll be in ecstasy. this doesn't mean i can't tell the difference between that kind of trite (though strangely elegant) couplet and, say, the poetry of Bob Dylan.

Murphy's lyrics fall everywhere between the two extremes. the lyrics for the song "Yeah" are pretty much just "yeah yeah yeah yeahyeahyeahyeah yeah. yeah hey hey hey hey" and "everybody keeps on talking about, no one's getting it done" (what the fuck is it?). the first track gets a little more complex. here's the first verse:

well Daft Punk is playing at my house, at my house
i'll show you the ropes, kid, show you the ropes
i got a bus and a trailer at my house, at my house
i'll show you the ropes, kid, show you the ropes

it's a song about Daft Punk playing at his house. what more would you expect? you gotta PA the house, Sarah's girlfriend is working the door, the robots descend from the bus, etc. etc. oh yeah Murphy loves singing about music, though he usually takes it a step further:

beats on repeat, beating on me
from every car in the street
there's constant repeat on repeat
of your paranoid, heartbreaking beats
on repeat

it's a five song repeat, beating on me
your favorite band helps you sleep
and here comes the new stylish creep
from every car in the street
on repeat
on repeat

.
.
.

i wish i could complain more about the rich but then
all their children would line the streets,
come to every show,
no one wants that

i wish i could complain more about the rich but then
all their children would flee the schools,
come to every show,
drugged and unwashed

i wish i could complain more about the rich but then
all their children would line the streets,
come to every show,
unwashed and drugged and
beats on repeat, beating on me
on the radio
on your radio
on your radio

music about music! "Daft Punk is Playing at My House," "On Repeat," "Disco Infiltrator," "Beat Connection," LCD Soundsystem is all about dancing yourself clean and being hyperaware of it.

the best example of Murphy's clever lyrics and super self-conscious irony comes on the first track of the second disc, "Losing My Edge." the song starts with a miminal thumping bass line backed by a couple snares and hi-hats. then comes Murphy's nasally singing. then come more hi-hats and a little flickering guitar. the vocals start whacking out, echoing like there are two James Murphys in the room. the guitar starts creaking like an electronic insect, still minimal. when we hit around 2.5 minutes, cymbals crash announcing a less restrained, more potent bassline, still playing the same old minimal phrase though. it won't stop until the song ends. the drums pick up a little more. the guitar gets a little whackier. slowly, always slowly building to a paranoid, anxiety-ridden, frustrated cry for help at the end: "look at all the good music i know!" here are the lyrics, in full:

yeah, i'm losing my edge.
i'm losing my edge.
the kids are coming up from behind.
i'm losing my edge.
i'm losing my edge to the kids from France and from London.
but i was there.

i was there in 1968.
i was there at the first Can show in Cologne.
i'm losing my edge.
i'm losing my edge to the kids whose footsteps i hear when they get on the decks.
i'm losing my edge to the Internet seekers who can tell me every member of every good group from 1962 to 1978.
i'm losing my edge.

to all the kids in Tokyo and Berlin.
i'm losing my edge to the art-school Brooklynites in little jackets and borrowed nostalgia for the unremembered eighties.

but i'm losing my edge.
i'm losing my edge, but i was there.
i was there.
but i was there.

i'm losing my edge.
i'm losing my edge.
i can hear the footsteps every night on the decks.
but i was there.
i was there in 1974 at the first Suicide practices in a loft in New York City.
i was working on the organ sounds with much patience.
i was there when Captain Beefheart started up his first band.
i told him, "don't do it that way. you'll never make a dime."
i was there.
i was the first guy playing Daft Punk to the rock kids.
i played it at CBGB's.
everybody thought i was crazy.
we all know.
i was there.
i was there.
i've never been wrong.

i used to work in the record store.
i had everything before anyone.
i was there in the Paradise Garage DJ booth with Larry Levan.
i was there in Jamaica during the great sound clashes.
i woke up naked on the beach in Ibiza in 1988.

but i'm losing my edge to better-looking people with better ideas and more talent.
and they're actually really, really nice.

i'm losing my edge.

i heard you have a compilation of every good song ever done by anybody.
every great song by the Beach Boys.
all the underground hits.
all the Modern Lovers tracks.
i heard you have a vinyl of every Niagra record on German import.
i heard that you have a white label of every seminal Detroit techno hit - 1985, '86, '87.
i heard that you have a CD compilation of every good '60s cut and another box set from the '70s.
i hear you're buying a synthesizer and an arpeggiator and are throwing your computer out the window because you want to make something real.
you want to make a Yaz record.
i hear that you and your band have sold your guitars and bought turntables.
i hear that you and your band have sold your turntables and bought guitars.
i hear everybody that you know is more relevant than everybody that i know.

But have you seen my records? This Heat, Pere Ubu, Outsiders, Nation of Ulysses, Mars, The Trojans, The Black Dice, Todd Terry, the Germs, Section 25, Althea and Donna, Sexual Harrassment, a-ha, Pere Ubu, Dorothy Ashby, PIL, the Fania All-Stars, the Bar-Kays, the Human League, the Normal, Lou Reed, Scott Walker, Monks, Niagra, Joy Division, Lower 48, the Association, Sun Ra, Scientists, Royal Trux, 10cc, Eric B. and Rakim, Index, Basic Channel, Soulsonic Force ("just hit me"!), Juan Atkins, David Axelrod, Electric Prunes, Gil! Scott! Heron!, the Slits, Faust, Mantronix, Pharaoh Sanders and the Fire Engines, the Swans, the Soft Cell, the Sonics, the Sonics, the Sonics, the Sonics.

you don't know what you really want.
you don't know what you really want.
you don't know what you really want.
you don't know what you really want.
you don't know what you really want.
you don't know what you really want.
you don't know what you really want.
you don't know what you really want.
you don't know what you really want.
you don't know what you really want.
you don't know what you really want.
you don't know what you really want.
you don't know what you really want.
you don't know what you really want.
you don't know what you really want.

i know i want to listen to every one of those artists now.

Thee Oh Sees: Live

they certainly have some sick albums, eps, singles, etc, but make no mistake: Thee Oh Sees is a band best served live.



i spent my last two nights seeing them: the first, at a dirty garage show in Los Angeles, and the second, at a tiny classroom trailer on UC Irvine's campus.

jumping, headbanging, sweat, pushing, pulling, falling, rising, spinning, turning, punching, being, being, being, being: it's better than ice cream and liquor.

every time i've seen them, they open the set with Enemy Destruct, the first track off of Help. of course, it's considerably sped up and, like a firecracker, the previously still pond of people leaps into a torrent of raging rock & roll-induced madness.

their songs, though bursts, just explosions of energy that don't last very long, make up for their shortness in sheer intensity. when you're gasping for air and limb a minute in, you're happy to be able to breathe when they finish at minute two. that said, i have yet to see them live without experiencing one of their songs drawn out to its extremities, stretched minutes upon minutes into infinity, a brutal chant of rhythm and melody that possesses your feet, makes you think it's punk rock disco night across the universe.

the rest of the band fucking rocks, but it's clear that the lead guitarist, John Dwyer, is the general in this war. like a sun, all our energy we owe to him. and, like a good military superior, he's always dicking around. whether eating his microphone like in the above photo, forcing the head of his guitar into the ground, or hopping like an lsd leprechaun, Dwyer attracts all eyes in the room. (that is, if you don't have hair or fists in your face already.) at one point last night, he shoved his microphone against the head of one of the drummer's toms and started guitar-humping the amp to draw as much fucked up feedback from it as possible. keep in mind, this is halfway through a 10-minute epic of a jam whose only recognizable lyric (to me) is "all you need is the summertime oh oh," repeated over and over. eventually Dwyer gave up (or was fulfilled) and the drummer somehow mustered up the energy to bust out some cracked out drum solo that had one kid in front of me convulsing until he collapsed on the floor, where he continued to shake his arms, legs, and head anyway.

this band is why i have long hair.

Help - Thee Oh Sees (2009)

okay. i admit it. i'm obsessed with this album, not just the album art:



originally, i simply wrote, "another quick, short post. what i imagine when i think about good and fun psychedelic rock: a purple smiling bat that can magically make rainbow arcs squiggle."

i tried to reduce my love for this album to its album art. let me try again: in less than a month, this has become one of my favorite albums of the year.

it's grungy. it's one of the dirtiest albums i've listened to in a long time. the drums are simple, but they provide a perfect backbone to the swampy, distorted humming of the guitar. i can't tell if the vocals have tons of effects put on them, or this guy just sings like a maniac, but i'm at last sure the reverb is out of control. it's like he's singing for a football stadium inside a garage. which brings me to my next point.

it's psychedelic. this guy sings like a retarded angel shaman, or something. i don't know how else to describe it. his voice is high-pitched and harmonious and wonderful, but it's also kind of whiny and just plain weird. beyond the vocals, this will FEEL just like good old rock & roll, nothing psychedelic at all. and yet, there is something in the sound that i think you will find makes it teem with rainbow sparkles and talking purple bats coming out of walls.

it's fun. all i want to do when i listen to this record is get off my goddamn chair and jump around. it's not particularly danceable, it's not what you'd call headbanging music, but i can't stop myself from dancing and headbanging to it.

ambiguous descriptions of a few tracks (which can all be listened to fully and freely here):

electric guitar and bass guitar wind, wind, wind, wind in the first three seconds and then, suddenly, the album blasts off with "Enemy Destruct." drums splashing, maybe some tambourine, and the singing comes in, trippy, like we just got dropped off on the peak of an acid trip.

the second song, "Ruby Go Home," is my favorite on the album, but i don't know why. it starts off relatively simply, with some basic guitar riff, basic drum thrashing, etc etc. the verse involves all sorts of nonsense and the phrase "ruby go home!" the chorus involves a bunch of oh!s and "ruby go home!" the bridge involves repetition of "ruby go home!" there's nothing inherently special about this song. but the band sinks into this moment, this glowing red moment, and they just feel it. they sit there and rock and rock and rock. the moment doesn't end. the guitarist starts fucking around a little bit, nothing fancy, nothing to suck us out of the moment, nothing extraordinary, just more rocking out. and it's catchy, too.

what the hell is that sound at the beginning of "Meat Step Lively?" i have no fucking clue, but it sounds like a baby guitar crying. more rocking out, more living in the moment. except halfway through this one, a wind instrument comes out of nowhere. somebody's blowing on a flute or something, transforming what just sounded like acid-tripped-out Kinks into the pop version of King Crimson or something.

the sixth track, "Can You See," definitely reminds me of something i've heard before. the way it swings back and forth like a pendulum. no, more like a crowd at a show. it's like swaying, not swinging. the bass does it. do do do.......do...do do do......do... and so on.

unfortunately, (for me) the album sort of tapers off towards the middle after an explosive first half, barring one song:

"Destroyed Fortress Reappears" is my second favorite song on the album. this is where the vocal reverbs go nuts. for five minutes he just chants like a high priest over this snare drum march and simple bass/guitar strumming, highlighted with this awfully catchy hook every so often.

i'll admit. the first time i listened to this record i was baked out of mind. i was sitting on a couch in my friend's apartment in the mission, facing one of two tower speakers bellowing out the cool tunes. i really couldn't speak, but i periodically checked with other people to make sure they thought the music we were listening to was as good as i kept thinking. i think i downloaded it the next day.

then a few weeks later, a couple days ago, i went to a bar to see them live for $7. seven bucks! well, not counting beers. but the show was outstanding. short, maybe. but they've only got two albums and each one is full of 1-3min tracks. i expected people to enjoy the show but not rock the fuck out like they did. we were practically moshing. they played "Ruby Go Home" thank god. and i'm pretty damn sure they played it twice as long, illustrating my point that the band has found an inescapably savory moment in that song.

this is good fucking rock & roll, plain and simple.

listen to whole thing here.