Concentric Pleasures: LCD Soundsystem

This Is Happening is LCD's trickiest record yet, beginning with the very first song. "Dance Yrself Clean" begins unusually quietly: everything sounds like it's been recorded with a mic placed ten feet away, including Murphy's voice. Your first instinct will be to turn up the volume, and when you do, it just draws you deeper into the room, hearing as if in three dimensions—handclaps front and center, a cowbell over there, the vocals back behind some protruding furniture. Until, bam: over three minutes in, the drums and synthesizer kick in, and the decibel levels explode. (The song is like an IED set off by the resistance to the " loudness wars.")

The opening gambit can actually be kind of annoying, especially if you're not sitting near the volume control. But it makes Murphy's point: we are here to screw with your expectations. The album's first single, "Drunk Girls," did that too: it's the album's dumbest song, a barroom rocker that feels out of character for the band, even if the chorus is pure LCD. The punchline comes later, with "You Wanted a Hit," Murphy's not-so-modest protestation that "maybe we don't do hits." It would seem petulant if it weren't so flat-out gorgeous, a sad tug of war between new wave and house music. It's having cake and eating it too: doling out one song for the fraternity brothers and sorority sisters, and another for the record nerds who don't mind if a song stretches on for nine minutes. But it also never feels like niche marketing. I hear a spirit of innocence in this record, of Murphy trying to make whatever kind of sound he damn well pleases, even though he's wise enough to know the ways he'll be scrutinized, no matter which direction he takes.

He doesn't neglect the dance floor. "One Touch" is an invigorating electro-disco jam, a love letter to distortion. "Pow Pow," a little like !!!'s "Me and Guiliani," humps its funk with improbable grace, turning "plagiarized regret" into something actually kind of therapeutic.

I'm not sure that there's anything here that quite touches "Someone Great" and "All My Friends," Sound of Silver's one-two punch to the middle-aged gut. The sweetly chugging "All I Want" comes close, with a molten guitar lead reminiscent of Bowie's "Heroes"; so does "I Can Change," which reinterprets Gary Numan's icy, oily synth pop as a sheepishly earnest love song. (For whatever it's worth, this is the song—not "Drunk Girls"—I find myself singing over and over.) And "Home" finds sadness in the Tom Tom Club's Caribbean disco, worrying away at a line ("take me home") that also turns up in "I Can Change."

Where is home, for James Murphy? It's interesting that Pitchfork began their review with a comparison to the Strokes, if only because I can't hear LCD's title and not be reminded of Is This It, the Strokes' 2001 shot across the hipster bow. They praised an affected naturalism, they claimed New York as their stomping ground. James Murphy, as emblematic a New York musician as any, quit the island for Los Angeles, where he and his collaborators set up shop in a secluded mansion with a pool, dressed all in white, as un-New York as you can get. Murphy's too jaded to believe in things being done "naturally," though, and he often retreats behind his heroes—particularly Brian Eno, whose influence is all over the album.

But the artifice doesn't mask a strong sense of longing. Far from home, Murphy—40 now, married, orphaned—makes music that sounds like he's been floating out to sea for a long time now. Maybe home is just where the music is.