3.27.2010

LCD Soundsystem :: "Drunk Girls"

The level of intensity around the new LCD Soundsystem record is such that a girl I know working the album told me, rather flatly, "I could play it for you but I'd have to break the CD in front of you after." It wasn't entirely clear why this would be necessary but I got the point; we will take nearly theatrical measures to protect this record. But in a coordinated and approved "leak" (when publicists call "leaks" a "surprise" in their email announcing the "leak," you can be deservedly suspicious of the source), James Murphy and LCD Soundsystem are officially back with first single, "Drunk Girls."

"Drunk Girls" will storm its way onto Alternative Rock radio and onto the late-night playlists of millions of self-described cool kids. It is instantly memorable and catchy, a hybrid of the lyrical reference games of "Daft Punk Is Playing At My House," and the thudding, sonic down-strokes of "North American Scum." Murphy is at is his finest, saying almost nothing while still unleashing Confucian gems like, "Drunk girls know that love is an astronaut/It comes back but it's never the same." In the chorus, Murphy affirms that, "I believe in waking up together" before clarifying, "I believing in waking up with no promises." The arrangement storms and fumes around him, exhaling and puffing like an over-confident and terrifyingly breakable teenager.

For James Murphy, a guy who sounded like a rock star before he was one, this is the moment where those two impulses intersect. He recorded the album in a Los Angeles mansion. The last record, Sounds of Silver was about the crisis of post-adolescence, spending 45 days in the middle of France, and where the hell were your friends? The unsettling is over. As Murphy postulates, "Just cause you're hungry/doesn't mean that you're lean," super-stardom is at hand. Hungry and fit, LCD Soundsystem is playing your house, your house.

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