Review of the Century #4

Album: LCD Soundsystem - 45:33
This Is Fake DIY, 2007.

James Murphy is incredible. He’s totally god-like: conjuring miracles, enabling mere mortals to do the undoable. He’s actually a lot better than a god because he routinely doles out top notch Class A dance joy. So, when something he makes doesn’t get noticed, that is a bad thing. However, when this thing gets re-released so everyone does notice it, that is a Very Good Thing Indeed.

Great news then, that 45:33 has been given a second run out. Originally sponsored by Nike to help people forget about the alleged unethical sourcing of their wares, 45:33is really quite simple. It is a sub-46-minute long sprawling dance-a-thon, carved and tweaked to fit the athletic peaks and troughs of running for said duration. Although merely listening to it is enough of a workout, 45:33 - originally a iTunes-only offering – has now been dissected into its 6 distinct but overlapping movements, one of which is noticeable as ‘Someone Great’, one of the very high points of the brilliant ‘Sound Of Silver’. To analyse this rhythmic funk behemoth as the sum of its parts would be grossly unfair: the true majesty of this project is the audacity and deft touches throughout which make 45:33 one of a kind. Not a boring moment in sight, and also the odd chuckle as Murphy hisses ‘Shame on you’. It is hard not to imagine fingers being wagged and love handles being gently tugged, the cheeky so-and-so. As things eventually wind down at the end, you’ll be left exhausted, regardless of how far you’ve ran (or not).

Although ‘45:33’ would be more than welcome on its ownsome, it is backed up by another 3 tracks. Most noteworthy is ‘Freakout/Starry Eyes’ – a tripped-out funk odyssey in three parts, spanning a gigantic 12 minutes. It switches from the jazz-hand-shaking Murphy on the more afrobeat moments of ‘Sound of Silver’ and clunks into heavy percussion in the guise of 80s No-Wavers Liquid Liquid and Konk before winding up again for the bizarrely loveable retro-electro stomp of ‘Starry Eyes’, a story about getting rained on in NYC. On any other album, this offering would be a huge selling point, massively ambitious and in most cases, comparably fantastic, but on ’45:33’ it is dwarfed by the immense magnitude of the eponymous effort. Meanwhile, a dubbing of ‘North American Scum’ and the gurgling ‘Hippie Priest Bum-Out’ do the job admirably, but have the sad fate of being located on the same piece of plastic as ’45:33’ and ‘Freak Out/Starry Eyes’.

The re-release of 45:33 cements LCD Soundsystem firmly atop the podium of amazing aceness, affirming and supporting the quality of the album release earlier this year. The title, signifying the common speeds of modern vinyl records shows the universal nature of this effort, both the pop wonderment found on 45s and the monumental album-length experiences found on 33s. A fantastically ambitious gem, and mercilessly executed: Murphy is simply miles ahead of the pack.