I'm not as clever as David!

So I'm not creating a catchy header. too fuckin bad

When I listened to this cd [Sound of Silver by LCD Soundsystem] for the first time on the ride home to Bloomington, I'll admit
I wasn't all that impressed. Me and David had agreed to do this review thing though, and
the more I heard the tracks around town in stores and restaurants, the more I realized
they had grown on me without me noticing. So I'm giving it a second look with a perhaps
opener mind. Yeah I used opener as an adjective, deal with it.

So we start out with "Get Innocuous!" with an understated drum machine holding down the
fort til a bouncy bass-line, sustained piano chords, and a heavy beat eventually take
over the show and remind us that this is going to be a dance album. The song starts
sounding like a mash-up between daft punk and some long-forgotten 80s pop band... in the
best possible way. The texture thins out near the end and adds some radiohead-esque
trippy synthesised strings in the background which carry us with a high harmonic into...

"Time To Get Away". Now we a have a minimal, almost white-stripes sound to begin the
next track. The groove settles in and the percussion section livens things up a bit- the
song grows in intensity basically through the end, but despite it's catchy hook, it
didn't grab my attention nearly as much as the opening track. Although I suppose having
a slight lull in a dance album can be a necessity :)

"North American Scum" is a clever tongue-in-cheek satire on our continent's stereotypes.
With a throbbing bass line and simple guitar line, this song is just fun. James Murphy's
vocal stylings take the lead here, which again (as many critics agree) sound like a not
so distant memory of 80s pop music.

Now we've got another more synthetic track - "Someone Great" - with turntable squeals and
a pulsing sample in the background. The mood relaxes with the introduction of the voice,
but some clever bass moments and the bubbly guitar keep it driving forward. I'm dying
for this track to hit a bigger climax, but alas that is not the way it went. I still like it though

The stuttering unsteady piano at the beginning of "All My Friends" reminds me just a
LITTLE too much of trying to teach little kids piano lessons, but soon the drums set the
beat straight and the song takes off. This song is a little repetitive for my tastes, and like "Time To Get Away" just doesn't really grab me.

It occurs to me that I've not been paying attention to the lyrics barely at all... hmmm. I guess that's just not what I pay the most attention to when I first hear a song.

Next comes "Us V Them" A funky little number that's the most danceable we've come across since the opening track. Another silly, fun song with lots of creative percussion (especially at the build-up where they start saying "us and them..."). The bass line is just great.

The tempo stays up for "Watch The Tapes", which with the right speakers could get anyone's toes tapping. A short little track that gets your blood pumping again.

The title track conjures up images of Daft Punk again for me, with funny (if somewhat random) lyrics. By far one of my favorite tracks on this album, the build-ups are more subtle and the song is a lot more varied than some of the other tracks. The trippy keyboards and percussion bring back in the "vocals" again before the bass gets a moment to shine. This is another track that'll get you dancing no matter who you are.

The final track is such a change from the rest of the album that it scarcely seems to be by the same band. The lovely, heart-felt ballad shows a side of LCD Soundsystem that has not even been hinted at - jazzy and poignant this is another highlight of the album for me. I'll admit I'm a sucker for acoustic bass... The heavier guitar and drums near the end speak louder than some of the lyrics, and the final straightforward outro ends the album very effectively.

So in conclusion...

I WANT to like this album more. The tracks I like, I love. "Get Innocuous!" and the last two tracks are brilliant. And there are a lot of great musical ideas, but sometimes I feel like more thought could have been put into fleshing them out - but this doesn't surprise me, because I would be more into the dance aspect of the band than the punk aspect, and I knew that going into this album. In short, Sound of Silver makes me want to check out more of the band, but I don't think that I would listen to it on a religious basis like some other cds I've found recently.

final answer: 4/5

p.s. This album was acclaimed as one of the best of 2007. I believe that this was a good album, but just not necessarily my cup of tea. You should check it out for yourself :)