The LCD Soundsystem song inspired by Joy Division
If there’s one thing that James Murphy knows a thing or two about, it’s the kids getting the better of you. Most of Murphy’s work with his beloved dance-punk outfit LCD Soundsystem revolves around getting old, losing touch with what’s hip, and the terror that comes with these revelations. We all get old, but for a music genius, that’s a particularly difficult pill to swallow.
Just look across the band’s catalogue to see some examples. ‘Losing My Edge’, the band’s first single, is all about how changing tastes and cool kids evolve with lightning speed. ‘Someone Great’ is a melancholy meditation on death and how it affects the people left behind. Even newer songs like ‘New Body Rhumba’ contains those same anxieties about growing up and falling out of step.
But if one song takes a magnifying glass to time slipping away, it’s ‘All My Friends’. The eight-minute Sound of Silver jam can’t help but get caught up in the “proper” ways to spend your youth and then grow up. Murphy himself was in his late 30s when he wrote the song, but when asked about the song’s specifics, Murphy focused on the music more than the lyrics.
“I don’t know. It’s sad-ish, and people are old,” Murphy told Mojo Magazine. “I was purposefully trying to chase a feeling I got from Joy Division’s ‘Transmission,’ which starts off so gentle and becomes so fucking overwhelming. By the time he’s going, ‘Dance, dance, dance to the radio!’ your head’s exploding.”
“And that Arthur Russell song, ‘Dinosaur L’s Go Bang’. I don’t know who did the vocal, but it’s just like, ‘I just wanna see all my friends at once; I’d do anything to get the chance to go back.’ It’s the simplest thing I could imagine, and it’s fucking beautiful,” Murphy added. “It’s always been a really important theme for me, and it’s nice to write a song that comes from it.”
When Sound of Silver was released in 2007, Murphy was on his way toward achieving most of his goals, if ever so slightly belatedly. LCD Soundsystem had become one of the most popular rock bands in America at a time when rock was experiencing something of a low ebb. Murphy’s innovative blending of dance, house, krautrock, trance, punk, and rock was something that transcended a certain sense of “coolness”, which, ironically, made it pretty cool when it was released.
Check out ‘All My Friends’ down below.
