LCD Soundsystem's newest (and last?) album

I waited patiently the morning of the release date, with my iTunes open, and poised to click "buy album" and my musical vigil was rewarded with some very satisfying new tunes from one of my favorite projects of all time. Some of the best tracks on This is really happening are "You wanted a hit", "I can change", "pow pow", "drunk girls", and "home" (even though I consider the entire offering to be more than praiseworthy).

"You wanted a hit" in particular, summed up the attitude of James Murphy towards music today and the industry itself. He expressed a kind of carefully worded frustration with the manic songwriting artists must engage into fulfill the terms of contracts or to create a "hit". Murphy sings: "You wanted a hit but maybe we don't do hits. I try and try and it ends up...feeling kind of wrong" which hints at true artistic frustration than the puerile, temper tantrums, against the capitalist world which end up (no coincidence here) making the artist piles and piles of money off of malcontent, angst-ridden, teenagers ( á la Rage Against the Machine).

As is usual for LCD Soundsystem, the other lyrics are droll, thought-provoking, stream-of-consciousness rants by Murphy, some of which contain concrete meaning while others just sound like really, really, cool dadaist poetry. The music itself is played in accordance nature of previous albums without sounding recycled or boring. If you liked the band's first two albums then there is no reason you should shy away from This is really happening. Some of the catchiest melodies on the LP come from "I can change" and "You wanted a hit". It's all thinking man's dance music with a heavy heaping of disco beats, synths and feedback-laden guitar: very post-punk. I can't say too much else about how much I love this album and encourage all of you to go out and buy it legally to reward Murphy for his genius. There's a rumor, which I can't seem to trace to its source, that the album might very well be the last. I hope this is not the case but even if is, this project has left us all with some stellar music.

Reflecting on the days when Goths were Goths: Bauhaus!

Last year, I started investigating lots of influential post-punk bands after falling in love with Joy Division. Post-punk music led me into early goth bands like The Fall and the Birthday Party. I learned that goth, in its truest definition, has nothing to do with the little Hot Topic wearing, attention-seeking posers who have succeeded in hi-jacking the word over the past ten years. Early goth, true goth, is dark, dancy, and provokes melancholy, contemplation, and restraint.

The vocals are dramatic and frequently tinged with a bowie-esque British accent. The intensity of goth vocals often points to an almost operatic style of music; good goth bands are dramatic without being totally overboard sentimental. A singer who paved the way for the stylings of many goth/dark post-punk bands that followed was James Murphy of Bauhaus fame. Murphy's vocals are beautiful, warbling, staccato cries of pain and mourning that differ greatly from genre pioneer Ian Curtis whose voice was a crooning baritone. Curtis idolized Jim Morrison of the Doors and this probably inspired the low booming voice he used while singing, which is strangely very different from his high British speaking voice. The vocals of James Murphy are high and shrill but have the potential to be just as grave and jarring as Curtis'.

Bauhaus carried on and expanded on the Joy Division tradition of simple but infectious beats the rely on repetitive and great-sounding drum and bass patterns which ultimately carry the guitar part in most songs (think of Shadowplay by Joy Division, very drum and bass driven). At times the guitar is only a means of tying together the drums and bass like in the Bauhaus song "Muscle in Plastic" where the guitar is simply used for ambient clicking noises and offbeats. Of course there are some guitar driven songs like "All We ever wanted was Everything" but they're outnumbered by the snappier songs that turn darkness into danciness and through a controlled punk sound (hence post-punk).

Albums I recommend (in no particular order):
-Bela Lugosi's Dead
-Mask
-The Sky's Gone Out
-In the Flat Field