This Is Happening is the third album from electronic demi-gods LCD Soundsystem, and it is possibly their best album too. This LP is definately an album where they decided to not bother fitting “single-length” songs onto it, as most of the songs (apart from recent party filler Drunk Girls and the slower yet danceable latest bordering-single “I Can Change”) are at least over 5 minutes long, with the longest (and yet not the most boring) song being just over 9 minutes long.
OPINION IN YOUR FACE.
First of all, opening track “Dance Yrself Clean” is without doubt the greatest start to any album this year, and it is also the best way to describe LCD Soundsystem in a nutshell (abeit, a near 9 minute long nutshell) the way the song starts off slow, and then slowly adding subtle-yet-big changes to the song that keep everybody interested and listening, before finally exploding into an all out brutal keyboard/synth beat that is guaranteed to get anybody rocking their hips.
LCD Soundsystem’s technique of building up the depth, emotion and power of their songs is certainly what makes them one of the greatest bands around (hopefully) today. However, this does not work in some cases. To be specific to This Is Happening, the songs Somebody’s Calling Me (which takes the crown of worst song on the album) and Home (second place) really lead to nowhere, as in, the wrong kind of nowhere, infact, they end up in a blank sheet of bland. Somebody’s Calling Me has this sharp and annoying synth noise right at the very start that makes it unlistenable to me, if the synth was counter balanced against something else, it would have been much better.
Also, some songs, while they might not be bad like Somebody’s Calling Me, they do appear to be rather generic and uninteresting, I am talking about the third song on the LP “One Touch”. It does seem to follow the same sound throughout the song and lacks any real depth to it and seems to become the catalyst for more and more generic songs to follow after it sadly. I might think this because it does come after Dance Yrself Clean, which is undoubtably the best song on the album (maybe the best song in LCD Soundsystem’s entire career) and One Touch really doesn’t match up to the depth or quality of it, so I suspect that everybody will be thinking the album will be 10/10 after listening to Dance Yrself Clean and lead single Drunk Girls, however, they soon begin to realise that, unfortunately, the album goes downhill from there.
It’s not because One Touch is quite a lengthy song, LCD Soundsystem are indeed known for their great songs to be rather long (“Us Vs Them” for example). Also, the longest song on This Is Happening is the 9 minute almost North American Scum (which features on LCDs second album “Sound of Silver” ) replay that is “You Wanted A Hit”, it follows the similar vocal pattern of North American Scum, aswell as sounding quite like a slower paced yet punch in the face of it too. So clearly, ideas were slim pickings inside James Murphy’s and Co.’s brains.
One big flaw about This Is Happening is that it has exceeded in greatness before it’s even begun its flow, Dance Yrself Clean followed by Drunk Girls really had me thinking the rest of the album will be fantastic, but, regardless of You Wanted A Hit, this album really does dip in quality immediately, which has always been the case in all of LCD Soundsystem’s albums, for example, Sound For Silver had a more varied and higher quality set of songs on it than This Is Happening, but the last 2 songs always kill the intensity and power that the previous songs had set, and that would be what I consider a flaw in LCD Soundsystem themselves, rather than the albums.
Ending on a good point, I think James Murphy’s vocals are top notch in the latest LP, I have always regarded James as one of best vocalists I’ve ever heard, the way he can shout out the lyrics and yet remain sounding brilliant just astonishes me, and I think he is at his best here in This Is Happening.
This Is Happening has been rumoured to be LCD Soundsystem’s final LP, I hope it isn’t because just from looking over their discography, they have produced an unholy amount of great songs and massive hits which will never be forgotten, it could be seen as a great time to end it “on a high” sense but I still think LCD have it in them to continue producing more and more hits.
Overall, I’d say that while it comes with its flaws, the high points easily knock those flaws out of my mind, this is definately LCD Soundsystem’s best album and I will rate it a light but stable enough 9/10. It’s my first 9 and I feel that these guys deserve it, even with that terrible Somebody’s Calling Me song.
Thank you for reading, follow me on twitter @AdzybabyReviews 
