Someone Great
The four of us here at f/k are always talking to one another about music, as you can imagine, and one of our more heated debates as of late has been over the best album of the MM’s so far. Albums like Kid A, Person Pitch, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and Funeral have been thrown around, but I feel that we sometimes forget the golden gem given to us by James Murphy in MMVII, Sound of Silver.
More commonly known as LCD Soundsystem, Murphy has been working on this side project of his since MMII. After refining his skills for a few years Murphy hit the world with Sound of Silver, and now, to his amazement, he finds himself in the mix for the coveted award of f/k’s best album of the MM’s. Congratulations James.
LCD Soundsystem – Someone Great (Amazon/iTunes)
Leave a comment if you have an opinion on which album should be considered for this prestigious plaque.
-Bishop
While Funeral, Kid A and Yankee Hotel Foxtrot are all excellent albums and prime contenders for best of the new millenium (so far), they are not contenders for the number one slot. At least not in my book. Each of the aforementioned albums is just too much of a continuation of the indie and electronic tendencies of the previous decade.
Funeral is an accomplished marriage of Neutral Milk Hotel’s holy grail indie rock married to a chamber pop sensibility and just enough Bruce Springsteen to make them somewhat ironic (and to further lionize The Boss).
Kid A only sounded fresh in 2000 if one hadn’t been following Warp and Thrill Jockey’s releases for the last several years prior – which most of its audience had not.
Yankke Hotel Foxtrot was a bit of a crossover / cultural milestone, if for no other reason than its clever blend of Americana and Post-Rock was perfect (and perfectly inoffensive) for 2002. While it was a beautiful album, the fact of the matter is that it wasn’t particularly groundbreaking or new sounding – which any album chosen should be more representative of an era or prescient as to the direction music would be taking. YHF was neither.
Much like it’s predecessor, Sounds of Silver wowed audiences and critics alike with an album that was fresh, textured, introspective.. and an all-out party. A nerdy party, but a party nonetheless. So far, the 2000s have been a decade reflectiveness and stylishly (somewhat) un-ironic futurism and arch, angular (almost bitchy) Rock N’ Roll.
LCD Soundsystem is THE band of this decade. Sound Of Silver is THE album.
…
Are you joking? All the Warp records spanning from the mid to late nineties are all well composed experiments with success, but are clearly not on par with Kid A. Kid A marks the expansion of a completely new era of the infamous rock-electronic mash. It defies all prior new wave and alt rock albums and completely defines this generations progressive attitude towards music. Not only did Radiohead break away from their own past, they broke new boundaries in the original rock-album format.
LCD Soundsystem is such an honest new act for this decade in music, and it is refreshing, but please don’t ever advocate a “nerdy party” over progress and talent. The last thing I need is to see more hipsters drunkenly dancing to their own vision of what is the perfect “party album.”
Please excuse me as I lower the tone of this post with my comment. While LCD Soundsystem created two of my all time favourite songs (All My Friends & Someone Great), my favourite album of the past decade (bearing in mind I was 8 when Kid A was released) is most definately M.I.A. – Kala. I’m sure the ensuing commenters will be outraged at this relatively low-brow choice of mine; however the 2007 summer release of Kala reminds me of some of my happiest memories. As well as introducing me to new genres out side of the popular American/British Indie/Electro, my friends and I have spent hours & hours discussing it, singing to it, dancing to it, laughing at it, partying to it, driving with it. It’s the album of my youth and nobody can argue with that. Love the new blog btw!