LCD Soundsystem — Electric Lady Sessions
LCD Soundystem Electric Lady Sessions DFA/Columbia LCD Soundystem went on self-enforced hiatus in 2011 before re-surfacing with 2017’s brilliant american dream. This album is meant as a live document, recorded on the floor of the venerable New York studio, built back in 1967 by Jimi Hendrix in Greenwich Village. It was recorded at the end of the long tour behind american dream, and has the sound of a band well in tune and comfortable with each other. It sounds tight, in other words. Sessions is bookended by covers, opening with Human League’s, ‘Seconds,’ and finishing with Heaven 17’s ‘(We Don’t Need This) Fascist Groove Thing.’ ‘Seconds’ was originally written as a meditation on the assassination of JFK, but here, in LCD head honcho James Murphy’s monotonal voice, the chorus of ‘It took seconds of your time to take his life.’ Here, it is recast against the endless gun violence of the United States, which sees around 40,000 of us die per year. As for ‘Fascist Groove Thing,’ The Guardian reminds us that it was once banned by the BBC. The album kind of stumbles with the second track, ‘american dream,’ which I have always found to be, well, boring and kind of flaccid. But the Soundsystem recovers almost immediately with one of my all-time favourites of their oeuvre, ‘You Wanted a Hit’ from 2010’s most excellent ‘This Is Happening,’ which is one of my...
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