This Is Happening [Digipak]

Product Details

On first listen, the third album from James Murphy's LCD Soundsystem project feels a lot like a sequel to the group's 2007 opus, Sound Of Silver. There are familiar touchstones–-New York disco, electronic Krautrock, the '70s output of David Bowie and Brian Eno--and a similar pace, shifting deftly between pneumatic dance and soft synth-pop, sincerity and goofiness, snark and pathos. There are signs that This Is Happening works to an updated formula, though: new to the fold is Gavin Russom, synthesiser wizard behind DFA's Black Meteoric Star, who adds brilliant, squelchy analogue synth to the likes of "One Touch" and "Somebody's Calling Me". Lead single "Drunk Girls" is this record’s "North American Scum", a bubblegum bounce-along with a vocal nod to Bowie’s "Boys Keep Swinging". This Is Happening is at its best, though, when LCD space out and lock into driving grooves like the drum machine-powered "Pow Pow" or "You Wanted A Hit", a lean chug that finds Murphy at his most lyrically acerbic: "But maybe we don’t do hits", he snaps. This album says otherwise. –-Louis Pattison