Some Songs Considered

“You Wanted a Hit” - LCD Soundsystem
(Words: James Murphy, Music: LCD Soundsystem, available on This is Happening, DFA/Capital 2010)  

Music Diary Project Day One (Context here)

Off-Key Teenager - Two lines of “Pretty Girl Rock” (Keri Hilson) 

The first song I heard came at work, overhearing a kid walking in the hallway singing two lines from this song - “It’s not my fault so please don’t trip / Don’t hate my ‘cause I’m beautiful.” It’s noteworthy because after hearing the remix with JennyMack (who is also doing the Music Diary Project) I told her that specific line alone (plus a solid beat and catchy melody) would make that song a hit. 

“You Wanted a Hit” & “Home” - LCD Soundsystem

These two were the first songs I listened to by choice today in the car on the way home. I’ve had bits of both of these songs stuck in my head since seeing LCD Soundsystem this weekend (and I promise this post will be the last I have to say about them for a while!). 

“You Wanted a Hit” specifically reminded me of one of my favorite quotes from Pitchfork’s annotated discography. In it, James Murphy says, “instead of writing an op-ed piece, I have a band that’s an op-ed piece.” It’s a pretty terrific line to summarize that certain type of the band’s songs (Matthew Perpetua comes to a similar conclusion today on Fluxblog regarding “Yeah”), and “You Wanted a Hit” fits that well. If only more op-eds came with similarly icy synth melodies. 

“Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology)” - Marvin Gaye and “Graveyard Girl” - M83 

Listened to both with headphones while grocery shopping. They were from an old mix I had on shuffle, and I’m sure that I had good reason for having both of them in the same mix. Regardless, I hadn’t heard either in a while and it was good to hear them both. 

“Hey Hey What Can I Do” - Tim Palmeri (Led Zeppelin cover)

My friend Pete posted a link to an Archive.org show from Tim Palmeri, who fronts a jam band by day and occasionally plays random cover filled shows at a local bar in between. Most notably, Palmeri performs with a loop pedal, which lets him solo while “accompanying” himself. (Also, this is one of my favorite Led Zeppelin songs).

“One Shining Moment” - Luther Vandross 

This is the song CBS uses for their NCAA tournament montage. I only caught the end of the game, but it looks like it was ugly, ugly basketball. 

Conclusions: None really. I was kind of busy today and didn’t have any “appointment listening” or extended car trips or long periods at my desk (when I wasn’t writing in silence), so there wasn’t a whole lot to catalog. I imagine more in the forthcoming days. 

What did you listen to today?

“Someone Great / All My Friends” – LCD Soundsystem 
(Words/music: James Murphy / James Murphy, Patrick Mahoney, Tyler Pope, available on Sound of Silver, DFA / Capitol 2007) 

I wasn’t there when James Murphy put out the “Losing My Edge / Beat Connection” single, but by the time that LCD Soundsystem’s self-titled debut / compilation came out, I caught up. It soundtracked a lot of moments in my apartment during my final semester of college, and I swear at least once I nailed the exact tone and timbre of Murphy’s yelp in “Daft Punk Is Playing at My House.” Long story short, I liked the band more than enough to eagerly anticipate their follow up. I was prepared to like it, but felt ambushed when I loved it. Part was Murphy’s expanded range and chops – the “dance punk” label faded away by 2007, and Murphy went from being a guy who wrote and produced good tracks to someone who performed them just as well (see “New York, I Love You but You’re Bringing Me Down”).  

Most notably, I had a gut reaction to the album in particular the combination of “Someone Great” and “All My Friends” at the middle of the record.  A few years later when I bought Sound of Silver on vinyl, I was disappointed to find these two songs not only on different sides but entirely different records (“Someone Great” ends side B, “All My Friends” begins Side C), meaning that listening to the record meant taking a break to swap records between these two. Between the record swaps and listening to the songs independent of the album, it had been a long time since I listened to these two in immediate succession. 

So tonight I did what I should have done a long time ago – I made a single MP3 out of these tracks and hit play.  The version uploaded is a lower bitrate to fit Tumblr’s 10 MB upload limit, but it still gives you the opportunity to listen to these two songs, the emotional core of Sound of Silver, in immediate succession.  If you own the album (and if not, you should), go put it on and listen along. If not, click play as I share my listening notes from earlier tonight. 

1:37 – This is the moment where both James Murphy’s vocals and the glockenspiel enter. Even though I know it’s coming, the melody still catches me off guard. Perhaps it’s the way the bright bells highlight the notes Murphy sings, but the repetition of these notes sound so sweet set against the darker backing track.  It’s also worth noting that James Murphy plays all of the instruments on both of these tracks.

3:54 – This is the first shift in melody, however slight, where Murphy repeats “and it keeps coming” a few times before immediately shifting back into the verse melody. The repetition, both of the melody and of the specific words, stirs up the sense of dismay. 

5:35 – Right after the repetition of “when someone great is gone” line, this is the shift to the “we’re safe (saved?) / for the moment” lyric. The synthesizer starts to sound a bit more like a siren, and this juxtaposition always feels like a punch to the gut even when I know it’s coming. 

7:29 – Murphy enters “All My Friends” with the line “that’s how it starts.” Maybe this is why I’ve linked these two songs together, but this opening line always makes me feel like Murphy begins the song in the middle of the story. Of course, the popular interpretation of the song (in a thumbnail sketch: coping with getting older) relies on this feeling of looking back, so it makes perfect sense. 

Somewhere between 7:29 and 10:00 – the thing I focused on the first few times listening to this song was the same piano chord repeated for nearly five minutes. Now, I focus on the sounds Murphy gradually includes in the mix – the bright synthesizer in particular. I never notice their individual entrances; rather, I’m caught off guard every time in this range when I noticed they all entered yet can’t place my finger on when it exactly happened. 

12:38 – Murphy strains slightly as he sings higher, and it’s these type of moments on Sound of Silver that I wasn’t ready for based on the first record. It’s a rough edge, but by design, and while it might not have fit on some of the early singles, it gives these songs an unexpected emotional edge. It still catches me off guard. 

13:30 – Murphy’s already well into the home stretch at this point, and from the part where he holds the last syllable in “tonight” for a few seconds through the song’s conclusion roughly twenty seconds later, I am entranced. If “Someone Great” gets me about halfway through, “All My Friends” usually strikes after it’s already gone. 

Anyway, this is the best I can do to try to put the emotional response these songs trigger into some kind of framework. The true art here lies in the fact that I’m not the only one who responds in this way to these songs. 

More on LCD Soundsystem: Allmusic | Amazon MP3 | Emusic | Last.fm

“Daft Punk is Playing at My House” – LCD Soundsystem
(Words/music: James Murphy, available on LCD Soundsystem, DFA 2005) 

James Murphy’s best work under his LCD Soundsystem moniker tends to sprawl beyond five minutes.  Generally, these tracks need this time to gradually evolve, like the ever-intensifying “All My Friends” or the lesser acclaimed “Someone Great” from the same disc.  Some of these songs need their long running time to tell the entire story – the caustic “Losing My Edge” needs every one of its near eight minutes to build up and tear down any artificial notions of “cool.”  Given the larger canvas, Murphy generally will use all available space to his advantage.  He does these longer tracks so well that his shorter, more compact tracks fall through the cracks.  Some of his best compositions – “Tribulations,” “New York, I Love You but You’re Bringing Me Down,” and “Daft Punk is Playing at My House” – could play twice before reaching the end of some of his longer songs.

“Daft Punk…” sounds particularly tight when compared with some of Murphy’s more extensive mixes.  Fueled by a tight guitar riff, the song gives Murphy enough space for a thumbnail sketch of a Daft Punk basement show.  Murphy howls a few times and repeats some of his lines, but generally he stays out of the way of the track.  It’s the only track I can think of that features a cowbell solo as well (and a multi-pitched cowbell / a-go-go bell solo at that)!  It captures the specific vibe one might have scrambling to put together a house show (especially one for a group that fills much larger venues) – Murphy sets the stage and ends the track before wearing out his welcome, just in time for the guys in the robot suits to annoy the neighbors.

(As I’ve done a few times this week, I’ll be listening to the new LCD Soundsystem album This is Happening at 10:00 tonight on the East coast and tweeting my thoughts and replying to yours on the @somesongs Twitter page.  Hope you’ll join in!)

More on LCD Soundsystem: Allmusic | Amazon MP3 | Emusic | Last.fm

“All My Friends” – LCD Soundsystem
(Words/music: James Murphy, Pat Mahoney, and Tyler Pope, available on Sound of Silver, DFA 2007)

Officially, Some Songs Considered was born last New Year’s Day, driving west on the Mass Pike on my way from Boston back to Connecticut, as it was during this two hour drive that I worked out the idea for it.  However, in some ways the groundwork for the project started a little more than a year earlier when I connected on a strangely personal level with “All My Friends.”  Sound of Silver came out during a period of time where I felt in limbo and could identify with James Murphy’s meditation on growing old.  The strange thing – and the one that compelled me to write about it in the first place – was that I wasn’t the only one with these musical epiphanies.  Writers Tom Breihan and Hua Hsu wrote two separate pieces detailing their personal experiences with the song.  Breihan’s described an intensely personal experience in the midst of a single recap piece, while Hsu focused on the balance of nostalgia and melancholy in the song as well as a “pleasant shock of recognizing [his] newly 30 year-old self within it.”   In many ways, my goal (often unstated) was to do both of these things – capture the raw personal reaction Breihan shares and the eloquent and potent analysis that Hsu explicates.  Some days, I come closer than others (and other days I lose sight of these twin goals), but they remain, among others, the guiding thoughts dictating these posts.

Of course, it’s only appropriate that Hsu, Breihan, myself, and many others respond in such profound ways to “All My Friends.”  It’s a testament to the song itself – so eloquently described by Hsu in his Slate article that I won’t go too far into it.  Still, nearly two and a half years after first hearing Sound of Silver, the opening piano chords still rope me in and rouse my spirit in the way that few other songs accomplish.  If nothing else, this realization makes me cherish those rare nights with my distant friends even more.  Perhaps someday I’ll outgrow the song the same way I grew into it, but until that day I’ll spin the record, take stock of my life, and think about all my friends near and far.

More on LCD Soundsystem: Allmusic | Amazon MP3 | Emusic | Last.fm