Faking It
LCD Soundsystem tops '07 critics' list, but e-music has way more to offer
LCD Soundsystem has the best album of 2007, according to the best estimate around – The Village Voice’s annual poll of 577 pop critics. The overwhelmingly white, male roster of writers made a rare move in choosing a dance act, although this wasn’t the first time. (Moby’s Play took the weekly’s top honor in 1999.) It’s a timely anointing. As CityBeat has noted, dance music made a huge comeback last year, from the revival of Daft Punk to the hip-hop/dance reunion hosted by Kanye West (“Stronger”), to the cool-kid tidal wave washing over Justice, Hot Chip, and LCD shows.
And yet, any dance music aficionado who can tell Louie Vega from Armin Van Buuren will scratch her head in puzzlement: LCD is the best act dance music has to offer?
It’s not that LCD isn’t talented: It’s mainly one man, gifted DFA label head James Murphy, who usually takes four supporting musicians on the road. And it’s not that LCD isn’t relevant: The act is a big reason that dance music resonates with the cool kids sporting mullets and tights. Nor would we say that LCD isn’t dance music: The winning Sound of Silver album is a 4/4 feast of disco-punk stompers: Shoe-gazing, Robert Smith-flavored vocals meet twangy guitar chords and retro, disco-clap-accentuated rhythms.
Frankly, LCD’s disco infatuation is bizarrely regressive. On last year’s Fabriclive.36 compilation, Murphy teamed up with LCD bandmate Pat Mahoney for a tour through yesteryear. Tracks such as “Love Has Come Around” (Donald Byrd and 125th Street NYC), “I Got My Mind Made Up” (Instant Funk), and “Tell Me That I’m Dreaming” (Was (Not Was)) were paraded out like black folks at a corporate-diversity summit. It’s as though all the decades of work by deep-house heads to revive the spirit of the Paradise Garage never happened. LCD’s cool-kid crowd is ready to scuff up its Yohji Yamamotos and Air Force 1s on the floor. Make way!
The LCD sound not only represents absolutely nothing fresh, it actually takes steps back to a time in clubland that bourgeois nerds like LCD fans wouldn’t touch with a 10-foot iPhone. It’s historical slumming. Further, while getting about as funky and soulful as Elaine Benes at a wedding reception, the LCD machine has used dance music to market itself as hip and relevant – whether it’s giving a hollow shout to Daft Punk (2005’s “Daft Punk Is Playing at My House”) or using e-music as a whipping boy: If electronic dance music is edgy, and we diss it, we must be really cool.
“I get a lot of shit from people being like, ‘Why didn’t you just make dance music?’” Murphy told Pitchfork last year. “Those people I find very uninteresting. That type of criticism I find totally invalid.”
It’s clear that the LCD sound gets love for its familiarity in a time of rapid digital evolution. Many critics can’t keep up. Todd L. Burns describes the attraction to dance-rock in an essay accompanying the Voice’s annual poll. He describes the club-wary critic as “the one who doesn’t normally like dance music all that much, but heard this one record that transcended all those terrible clichés. Dude, just listen to it. It’s cheesy, I know, but it’s, like, a rock record made with fake instruments. It’s awesome, man.”
LCD is certainly a guitar-wielding stage act you can stand around to, if you so desire. Sound of Silver has been nominated for the Best Electronic/Dance Album Grammy Award, and, at this rate, will probably get it, too. Far better work came from Digitalism, Trentemoller, and Booka Shade last year. This split between true club-focused acts and rock ’n’ rollers posing as dance lovers could turn into a tectonic shift this year. The cool kids attracted to LCD have been good for the club industry. But at this point, I’m not sure I would miss it if LCD walked away. After all, it would continue moving backward as electronic dance music maintains forward momentum. Onward.
2008-01-31
Published: 01/30/2008
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Comments
The "cool kids" aren't monolithic, for as many kids spending time in American Apparel there are an equal number spending times on music blogs and in record stores. There are fashionistas, cokehead groupie girls, wannabe DJs, a new generation of ravers, the Dave Matthews fans that get dragged along to the shows and the hardcore music junkies who are listening to as much Dubstep as they are disco. The new dance movement that LCD has come to represent in America is forcing e music to expand and adapt. LCD and company aren't outsiders crashing the E Music party; they're just another guest in a much bigger where E Music is no longer the guest of honor.
I appreciate that not everyone will like LCD's style, sound or fanbase - but at the risk of sounding dismissive - what's your point?
That a certain method of making dance music is has dominated the general "dance genre" over the past two decades does not give its partisans any ownership over dance music as a whole. Sub-genre stratification has been the rule rather than the exception in dance music and if this latest iteration of backward looking (while forward moving) disco house upsets you, you can always stick to the latest Paul Van Dyk mix.
That last bit might be misinterpreting your argument, so I apologize if I'm taking your words where you'd rather not have them go. I'll look at the more likely charge, which seems to me to be that music along the lines of LCD is by nature regressive and will be detrimental to the progression of electronic dance music. This argument is lacking in my mind for several reasons;
1. the fans that you subtly deride as the "cool-kids" are doing more to push dance music forward than any of the infighting club heads or euro club trash ever have; instead of genre-obsessed infighting, the DJs these "cool kids" seek out play everything. This is not a situation or genre that is genuinely at risk for overexposure or heavy "popular" dilution. If anything it is the electronic dance that I *think* you are defending that has been slowed by mainstream leanings (or at least longings.)
2. By exploring the history of dance music (especially in the context of bringing rappers back into the mix ala Kanye) acts in this present dance movement are allowing for a new understanding of what dance really means. The old sounds made new by LCD are pushing new dance fans to go back and examine the roots that got us here. Moroder, New Order, Donna Summer - everything that has pushed and pulled "dance music" through its history is now fair game for reexamination and reinterpretation; this is inevitably how all genres cycle and evolve.
3. Finally, the suggestion that the "cool kids" are ignoring more "traditional" electronic acts like Booka Shade and Trentemoller I think is misplaced. I am writing from Baltimore/DC and many of the people you are describing follow these acts as actively as a remote American audience can. I wouldn't argue they are anywhere near as popular as LCD, however they are achieving fans that they would never have found otherwise.