Dance Yourself Clean

Due to a scheduling conflict, Daft Punk will not be playing at my house.

It does give me the time to do something that I don’t normally do, though; A music review.

I’m normally a bit charry about recommending music - it’s so personal. But I have to break my own rules on this one.

LCD Soundsystem were hovering on the fringes of my awareness for a while and I finally got around to sitting down and listening to the second album, Sound of Silver, released in 2007.

I cannot remember the last time I smiled the whole way through an album. I cannot remember the last time I got to the end of an album and went straight back to the start to hear it again. I then bought the eponymous first album on the strength of Sound of Silver and it’s almost as brain-bendingly fantastic. It's been a long time since I was excited at the thought of an impending album release. What would the next one be like?

The new album, This is Happening,  was released this week… and it is.

Man it’s good. If you like your dance music punk, if you like your electro synth ballads rock, if you like your sad lyrics funny, this is the album for you.

What I think happened is that Talking Heads were driving down the road in a van and they stopped to pick up Bowie, who had the Velvet Underground in his bag, and they were all going over to Gary Numan’s house, but they got into a head-on accident with the Eurythmics and Frankie Goes To Hollywood was driving the ambulance and they took the whole mess over to James Murphy Hospital, where doctor Murphy stitched it all back together and called it LCD Soundsystem.

This is Happening is not as good as Sound of Silver, but that’s like saying gold is not as good as platinum. You’re still happy with a big pile of it.