LCD Soundsystem

While LCD Soundsystem is grounded in the past, quality and talent make it an album deserving to be listened to for years to come. Talk to me in a few months, but I think this one won't be beat.

It's like the best music of the '70s compressed under '80s new wave dynamics. [Feb 2005, p.74]

Murphy pushes the near-immaculate music into the realm of genius with witty lyrics and wonderfully tetchy vocals. [Mar 2005, p.141]

Ample evidence that Murphy is far more than a dance-club wiseguy who's too clever by half. [Apr 2005, p.128]

After disappointing would-be breakthrough releases from so many of the discopunk frontlines, this is an album that’s more easily classifiable as “great” for what it isn’t, rather than what it is. It’s not inconsistent. It’s not a total deviation from what we know of the group. It’s never dull. And, most importantly--it is in no way a let down.

Unites the club and indie-rock crowds in ways few have attempted since the '80s. [25 Feb 2005, p.100]

LCD Soundsystem have set 2005's bar very high indeed and they sound like they’ve barely got started.

[It] could be annoying if it turned into a game of "spot the references", but somehow it never does.

Like just about everybody else these days, Murphy's more skilled at creating isolated tracks than making full-lengths, even though this particular full-length has few weak spots and unfolds smoothly as you listen to it from beginning to end. The bonus disc, containing all the stray single tracks, adds a great deal of value.

Intellectual without being snotty, encyclopaedic yet accessible, it takes the seemingly stalled electro model and kick-starts it into outer space.

Every song here, on both discs, is interesting and amazingly well-crafted.

A second disc which recaps some of the prior singles and B-sides resonates wonderfully, and provides a contrast for the new material, which is the same only better, faster and harder.

LCD Soundsystem doesn't quite overcome the high bar set by its bonus disc. That might sound rough, but fortunately, just compiling all of Murphy & Co's singles on one handy CD provides a valuable service for newcomers to his eclectically retro style.

He's got an excellent ear, a savvy way with hooks, and an untrained voice that knows its limitations. [Mar 2005, p.88]

Plenty of good-not-great stuff, and a tad unfocused.

A disparate yet cohesive collection of songs.

If he carries on writing songs as deliciously sour as this, dance music will end up needing to be saved from James Murphy, not by him. [22 Jan 2005, p.50]

The key is that Murphy, unlike his peers and the bands he's produced, is more interested in excellence than cool. [Feb 2005, p.96]

Marries raw rock attitudes to the sonic spread and kinetic energy central to dance music.

LCD have managed to be both underground hitmakers and bona fide album artists as easily as Murphy splices guitar noise and machine thump.

Inescapably, Losing My Edge is the best thing here, yet happily Murphy has more than one trick up his stylish sleeve. [Feb 2005, p.101]

It's mostly about a rollicking anti-frat party, where grizzled indie kids take ecstasy and discover the primal appeal of the dance floor. [Mar 2005, p.112]

It took ages to arrive, but LCD Soundsystem isn't the album you've been waiting for -- it's far, far better.

LCD Soundsystem's gift is to forge iron from irony, show that cleverness need not be enervating. [#252, p.46]

It's a classic case of debut album as faux anthology of musical influences, but it's also a successful collection with a marked sense of individuality, massively helped by Murphy's dry sense of humor, which demonstrates a willingness to embrace the contradiction at the heart of his musical personality.

The varied sounds and variety show that he has more tricks up his sleeve than I was led to believe. [#9]

You can dance to almost anything here, but between breaths, you'll marvel at his control and the way each sound pops like a primary color. [#67, p.104]

Here the whole sum is less than its individual parts: individual tracks display real quality, but the album fails to cohere.

LCD Soundsystem shares some of Slanted & Enchanted's sloppy-but-right brio, but where Pavement used their album to expand, LCD's first disc... sounds like a contraction, each song its own discrete postcard from a field trip rather than a canvas on which to mesh multiple ideas.