Top 25 Albums Of The Decade (#7)

7) LCD SOUNDSYSTEM – Sound Of Silver (2007)

James Murphy’s got two turntables and a microphone. He’s also got some of the best songcrafting capabilities to be put on public display since Pythagoras discovered the 3:2 interval. Or, like David Bowie if he had peaked with Let’s Dance instead of Station To Station. But this is not a “dance” album per se. What sets Murphy apart from the rest of his peers is that he has no peers—Sound Of Silver was released when he was the ripe old age of thirty-seven, by which time he had heard every good song ever done by anybody. He’s an outsider looking in, standing at the back of the club on his pedestal while the boys (lonely and drunk) awkwardly try to get a grind. But what Murphy lacks in youthful vitality he more than makes up for with experience, perspective and… heart. Take, for example, “Someone Great,” a song that at once evokes Daft Punk (duh), Peter Gabriel and “Don’t You Forget About Me.” I’ll let you in on a little secret: this is probably my favorite song of the decade. Yes, better than “The Manifold Curiosity,” better than “How To Disappear Completely,” better than “September Sun,” better than anything else I can come up with at the moment. I can’t imagine anyone who has ever experienced the loss of a loved one not feel some pull from this track. And to follow it up directly with “All My Friends” is simply unfair—hell, sometimes I think that this might even be my second favorite song of the decade. Wherever it ranks, it’s unquestionably the best song ever written in second-person. It begins with a useless piano chord struck repeatedly with no apparent rhythm, picks up a beat and—other than gradually heaping on more instruments over the course of seven-and-a-half minutes—never really goes anywhere, never changes. The first time I heard “All My Friends” I thought it was repetitive. Now I get pissed off that it ends so soon. Then comes “Us V. Them,” where the Bowie similarities are undeniable; the same can be said about the closing track, “New York I Love You, But You’re Bringing Me Down” (the only real rock song on the album), a music-hall glam downer that’s so “Rock ‘n’ Roll Suicide” that Murphy probably owes Ziggy some royalties. Yeah, none of this makes a whole lot of sense. And it’s probably not supposed to. If you had told me two years ago that a disco album (I reckon we can call it that) would make my Top 10 Of The Decade, I would have… made some indignant comment. But like I pointed out in my Part The Second review, the whole charm of the 2000s lied in the unexpected. So cheers to that. Now let’s all go drink a glow stick.