Sound Of Silver (studio album) by LCD Soundsystem

From seb7 04/15/2022 03:44

A pretty good dance album, but not one that strikes my fancy. Basically all the songs but All My Friends and New York are totally uninteresting to me. New York is a good song, but totally out of place in the album.

All My Friends deserves an entire review on its own. It is totally out of place on this album. Out of place not just in style, instrumentation, mood, but also in quality. All My Friends is one of the best songs ever made. It is nostalgic and bittersweet and is exactly what every song should be. Innovative, this song uses some of the most simple yet heartfelt instrumentation of any song. It reminds me a lot of my favorite song of all time, Age Of Consent. Technically, both songs fit into the synthpop and postpunk genres but lean on the postpunk a little more. Both are deeply heartfelt songs tackling loneliness. both feel like they could be the opening song to the greatest film of all time. Both allow one to lie in bed and look up at the ceiling as if it was the night sky and think of better times. Both are longing, but still have the great energy that a song like that should have. They aren't dull and slow. They aren't impersonal and emotionless. They are perfect. All My Friends is perfect. The rest of this album.... not so much

Spiritual descendants of Bowie. Fully capable of tendering a message over slow, sparse music as well as chaotic quasi-electronic dance tracks.

“New York I Love You” is one of the great takedown songs of all time. Savage.

The faster songs are entertaining, occasionally becoming too repetitive in the lyrics.

From Jboy56 02/02/2022 07:09

Just the type of music that fills the world, nothing genuine or original. Now I know what makes the critiques to love this kind of stuff, you must have a bad voice, nil guitar or instrument solos, and no decent melodies. New Wave and punky vibes are really not my jam.

1,000 albums you must hear before you die brought me here, and I was not disappointed.

Sin ser fan de la música electrónica, hay que reconocer que es un disco relativamente entretenido

From VictorVale 08/10/2021 17:02

Muito bom... Álbum que não cansa de ouvir!

From Timestarter 07/04/2021 21:35

Highlights:

- North American Scum
- All My Friends
- Us V Them
- New York, I Love You But You're Bringing Me Down

From planetneutral 02/07/2021 16:17

Unanticipated echoes of Talking Heads, but not quite as interesting in any facet.

From Boltzmann 12/10/2020 10:04

If you ask yourself "how come I like this album when I'm not really into electronic music", it's because this is barely electronic music. There are three songs that are genuinely electronic genres: "Get Innocuous!" (techno, and a rip-off of "Die Roboter" by Kraftwerk), "Someone Great" (techno, and the only song of the album I genuinely enjoy), and Sound of Silver (house, but only at some parts, which are the only parts I enjoy from the song, the rest contains a poor man's disco beat). The rest are just very sparse punk songs with some unnecessary, and hardly recognizable electronic sounds thrown in, as if they're ashamed to admit they use synths. Very rarely the synth sounds actually add something interesting to the song in a way similar to Brian Eno, like on "Us V Them", but it gets muffled in the background, and even the annoyingly preachy chant of "Us and them, over and over again" gets a more prominent place; the type of chant that only doesn't make me cringe if the message is simple like on Prince's outro on Controversy (the album), and even there I'm glad he kept it short.

So let's talk about the vocals now: it's shit. There is a fine line in new wave where it becomes rather charming how their vocals are so empty of decoration; James Murphy is not on this line. It (everything that isn't just spoken-word or chanting, of which I don't want to explain to anyone why there is no artistic value in) all sounds very try-hard to be something else, every scream sounds calculated, tempered, formulaic, even sometimes going back to old school rock 'n' roll.

And the same goes for the rest of the parts of the music (sometimes bordering on rip-offs as I noted already). Electronic music has simply moved on so much since Kraftwerk; it was adorable when Kraftwerk made very static compositions and funny bleep bloop noises, but in the '00s this doesn't fly anymore. That's not to say Kraftwerk were excused because they were limited in their equipment and lacking of a likeminded community which has tried everything already, I really think they pulled it off in some crazy way. Everytime I put on their music I am afraid my positive view of them will shatter and I will realize they weren't so great after all, but every time I am positively surprised. I digress, but in my defense, talking about Kraftwerk is just so much more interesting than this lame excuse for a band. Everything they do (the rock 'n' roll vocals, the kraftwerk-y or Eno-ish electronics, the punk aesthetic) has been done and better by people decades ago, which makes it rather shameful too really.

So lastly, is it good punk then? It's okay. Again, they follow the rules a bit too much. I think the electronic sounds are the only thing they got going for them to distinguish themselves, and the only excuse for critics to give what is actually just another indie punk album so much praise.

From teague 09/08/2020 16:06

This is what everyone should've been doing in 2007.