LCD Soundsystem/ This Is Happening

LCD Soundsystem
This Is Happening
(DFA Records / Parlophone)

For all the giant fanfares that you'd imagine would accompany the release of James Murphy’s third full-length release as LCD Soundsystem, 'This Is Happening' begins on a surprisingly sombre note with ‘Dance Yrself Clean’. Or at least, that is until someone utters the line ‘Don’t you want me to break out?’ and the bass suddenly starts throbbing upwards and outwards to a supremely funky groove.
With one track in the bag, any predictions that ‘perhaps he just doesn’t have it anymore’ can be abandoned. ‘Drunk Girls’ may be a pre-wrapped pop hit, but it still retains the lyrics to hit the nail firmly on the head (see: ‘drunk girls wait an hour to pee‘). For your dancefloor remedies meanwhile, see ‘One Touch’ and ‘I Can Change’ - both of which have tense synths underpinning all the electronics sashaying around.
Meanwhile, for all the irony infused into ‘You Wanted A Hit’, it's computer-firing-up noises and Murphy’s claim of ‘I’m not smart’ mark it out to be just as much of a sleeper hit as ‘All My Friends’.
If this is – as the main man seems to be claiming – the last we'll hear of the LCD project, 'This Is Happening' can go out as the final chapter in a surprising trilogy that didn’t compromise anyone else’s artistic ideals, and sounds all the more timely because of it.