And so it comes to LCD Soundsystem‘s third and purported final album. When you’re James Murphy and your previous musical work is the much adored Sound of Silver and you follow it up with your final piece of art, you better go out with a bang. And from the get go Mr. Murphy understands this fact and hesitates not to throw a handful of glitter and confetti into the visual components of our ears. 
This Is Happening was not recorded in New York’s DFA studios but rather the sprawling mansion of producer Rick Rubin. And lets clear up an important fact before we discuss and delve into the finiteness of this album. It’s no Sound of Silver, but it doesn’t need to be. When you put out an album that is that sonically impressive, both lyrically and melodically, you don’t need your next one to be as such. You’ve cemented your greatness and your place in the world’s musical oeuvre. All you need to do is underline the fact that you can still craft a few fantastic tunes and that your talent isn’t limited to a fluke. That’s exactly what This Is Happening does. It doesn’t try to be better than its predecessor, but it sure comes close.
The album starts off with a subtle sneakiness with “Dance Yrself Clean.” The track begins and continues for a while to be a slow, quiet puff of breath: a “What, I can’t hear you?” number. You think to yourself, “LCD Soundsystem makes dance music. What is this nonsense?” And your heart sinks a little to think Mr. Murphy has faulted you. The song pitter-patters a bit, joined by spoken vocals, but then the track starts to pick up a little, with soft whistling keyboards that run like a river through the quiet. You feel there might be hope and then when 3:08 hits you are jolted like a mother f*cker with probably the best dance music in a long time. A smack of snare drums that are quickly quenched by some of the deepest fuzzed out synths this side of downtown. The song is a dancefloor cracker. Murphy starts to sing with a “I just woke up from a boozy night” voice and firmly tells you to “Dance yourself clean” from such an evening and perhaps, aptly for him, to take stock of his place in the musical scene as a 40 year old man, as he sings: “Everybody’s getting younger/It’s the end of an era, it’s true.” Amongst this philosophical question of age and place, amongst the filthy percussion, also lies a romantic tune: “Break me into bigger pieces/So some of me is home with you,” a nice juxtaposition between the music and lyrics. “Dance Yrself Clean” is a winner and gets you ready for the rest.
The album follows with “Drunk Girls,” a fun-filled track of nonsense about night out on the town shenanigans, where lacking in lyrics and vocals it makes up in a rocking your head kind of musical style. “One Touch” harks back to Sound of Silver‘s “Get Innocuous”; what an 8 bit LCD Soundsystem video game would sound like. “All I Want” is a bruising sentimentality, mixing rock and dance, evoking the guitar work from Bowie‘s “Heroes,” with Murphy youthfully pouring out thoughts over a doomed relationship: “All I want is your pity/Oh all I want are your bitter tears.” It is a beautiful track with a softness that permeates through the callousness of the singer.
“All I Want” leads into another soft stunner, the album’s second best track, “I Can Change,” which showcases the best singing we’ve heard from Murphy since “All My Friends.” Mr. Murphy needs to croon us like this more often because it really is a wonderful vox box. He fills the track with bubbling synthesizers, a la Gary Numan‘s “Cars,” while coaxing a young thing, “I can change, I can change, if it helps you fall in love.” The song also starts off with some of the best lyrics I’ve heard in a while, “Tell me a line/Make it easy for me/Open your arms/Dance with me until I feel alright.”
“Hit” opens with a sparkle of Asian infused melodies eventually being drowned out by a thick, slobbering bass, as Murphy belts his Fuck You ode to record labels, “You wanted a hit/Well this is how we do hits/You wanted a hit/But that’s not what we do/So leave us alone”. The following two tracks, “Pow Wow” and “Somebody’s Calling Me,” though musically well composed, leave something to be desired.
This Is Happening ends with “What You Need,” and so comes the close of LCD Soundsystem’s offerings to the world, and it closes perfectly, with a neat, nostalgic period. The track perfectly dissipates Murphy’s thoughts over the years of his and his bands stature and significance in the music world, the idea of aging and coming to grips with moving on to the next stages of life, but pondering what sort of legacy was left and what the future holds, leaving us with…”You might forget/Forget the sound of our voice/Still you should not forget, yet/Don’t forget the things that we laughed about.”
This Is Happening will be released on May 17, 2010.
Track Listing:
1. Dance Yrself Clean
2. Drunk Girls
3. One Touch
4. All I Want
5. I Can Change
6. You Wanted A Hit
7. Pow Pow
8. Somebody’s Calling Me
9. Home
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