“Definitely better”: the two fraught years LCD Soundsystem spent making their masterpiece
LCD Soundsystem certainly could have been a cautionary tale of a band that quite simply peaked too soon.
The New Yorkers had released their sophomore album, Sound of Silver, in 2007, to unanimous critical acclaim, and with standout tracks like ‘All My Friends’ and ‘North American Scum’, it was easy to see why. People often talk about the difficulty of mastering that second record, but given they had smashed that out the park, the question for LCD Soundsystem was more about what came next.
Indeed, the fears of the fans got off to a rather trembling start when, in a 2008 interview, guitarist Al Doyle seemed to imply that the band had come to an end. Both he and frontman James Doyle quickly proceeded to shut those rumours down, but it still felt like time went on, and on, and on a little longer before the band made any moves again.
Of course, that was at least just the public perception. Behind the scenes was a different matter – a hive of activity was indeed going on, but it was a painstaking process. Over the course of two fraught years, LCD Soundsystem put every waking moment into chiselling away at a gem, until they finally had created the shiniest diamond of them all.
It almost goes without saying at this point that this was This is Happening, the album that cemented the band as the niche heroes of dance punk, but also emphatically signalled the closing of a chapter. After two years of incessant work, they emerged with triumphant hits like ‘Dance Yrself Clean’ and ‘Pow Pow’. Murphy upped the ante by boldly claiming it was “definitely better than the other two”.
But in this regard, it was also the moment in which LCD Soundsystem knew they should go out on a high. In hindsight, you could have seen this coming with Murphy’s sanctity towards the record before its release. “We spent two years making this record and we want to put it out when we want to put it out. I don’t care about money,” he pleaded to fans while on his knees, at a secret show in New York one month before it got unleashed.
Yet with that final flourish, on May 19th, 2010, This is Happening hit the shelves, and LCD Soundsystem took what everyone thought would be their final bow. It spoke to the power of a band who, in the space of just eight years after coming out of the fray in 2002, completely had a corner of the world eating out the palms of their hands.
Naturally, given that they would return only a few years later in 2015, the audience was slightly foolish for believing that Murphy and Co could ever stay away for long. What they did seem to prove, though, was that in everything they did, they were never overtly seeking fame or acclaim. The fact that they did things on their own timescales and on their own terms, perhaps made them even more successful.
The 2000s are remembered for many blistering aspects of the musical canon, but as far as LCD Soundsystem were concerned, they were all in a league of their own. No one had come close before, and no one could come near, and so in this respect, they were free to do what they wanted. Whether it took them two years to make an album or 20, it was always worth the wait.
