Appreciating LCD Soundsystem

Written By The Appreciator

Editor's Note: Justin first shared this manifesto with a friend who wasn't down with LCD in July 2017. Upon forwarding it to me (on a thread with 75 emails called "Shit is hot."), I asked if he would mind sharing it with The Appreciator. Dig the fact that this was originally an EMAIL. The man is passionate to say the least. 

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Alright! I’ve thought about this a lot and I think I’d recommend one of two roads to approach LCD:

  1. Have a nice time with LCD: Be reasonably sure that you’ll really like a handful of LCD Soundsystem songs within a reasonable amount of time. You can even sing along to a few at any hypothetical LCD shows you go to! If you do make it to that show, you’ll have a pretty good time but you might spend half of it wondering what all of those other people know that you don’t that’s making them so unbelievably happy…

    • Approximate time to reasonable appreciation of LCD: a week or so

  2. Dive deep and take a risk between: discovering a new, beautiful color you never knew existed that leaves you with a sense of intense happiness and nostalgic sadness; OR drowning and having wasted a lot of time that could have been devoted listening to bands that are fine…:

    • Approximate time to your own, beautiful relationship with LCD: 2-3 months to 5-6 years

    • Approximate time to intense ambivalence toward LCD: a couple of days

So! I will fault you for neither choice. LCD Soundsystem is above all a personal journey and so will play different life roles for different people. Which I think James Murphy (the frontman) would be exceptionally happy with. But also still sort of sad inside, no matter which choice you made... Please see details for both, below. For your convenience, I’ve made a Spotify playlist for both choices. Just click the titles! 

>> And remember, LCD don’t really take themselves this seriously, they just really fucking love music.

CAVEAT/DISCLAIMER:

 I WILL NOT ACCEPT ANY FEELINGS REGARDING LCD SOUNDSYSTEM THAT YOU MAY DEVELOP DURING THIS JOURNEY, NEITHER POSITIVE NOR NEGATIVE, UNLESS YOU PROMISE ME THAT YOU WILL ONLY LISTEN TO THEM WITH 

GOOD HEADPHONES

 AND NOT SOME SHITTY APPLE ONES OR YOUR COMPUTER SPEAKERS. IF YOU DON’T HAVE 

GOOD HEADPHONES

 THEN MAYBE YOU AREN’T SERIOUS ABOUT APPRECIATING MUSIC IN THE FIRST PLACE IN WHICH CASE I 

CERTAINLY

 DON’T WANT TO HEAR WHAT YOU THINK ABOUT THIS.

(I’m only sort of joking re: that caveat…)

Have a nice time

  1. Check out their newest track, a really nice blend of rock, dance, and wit: call the police

  2. The first song I fell in love with: Someone Great

  3. A witty, dancy tune: North American Scum

  4. Early middle-age nostalgia about friends and loss and love, my favorite and (some have argued) the greatest song of our generation: All My Friends

  5. A bittersweet, dancy tune about friendship: Home

  6. An example of their earlier, lyrics-heavy, fusion of dance and rock, and the (possibly literal) beginning of hipster-dom and the most likely song on this first list that you’ll only care to listen to a handful of times (but if you do find yourself really grooving to this song, you should consider jumping ahead to step one of the Deep dive!): Daft Punk

  7. Happy, funky, jam band-esque, dance interlude 1: Us v Them

  8. Happy, funky, jam band-esque, dance interlude 2: Tribulations

  9. Last great hit (before coming back last year!!!) that you have to somewhat get all of the above to really appreciate and a good mature fusion of dance and rock, but still dance heavy: Dance Yrself Clean

Enjoy the show!

Dive deep

Wow. Where to start? Perhaps that I didn’t come to love LCD intentionally and so have no idea if it’s possible. I was actually pretty “meh” the first time I listened to them, tried listening through their first, Grammy-nominated, record (LCD Soundsystem, 2005) all the way through a couple of times and put it down for a couple of years. I knew some folks that got into the first single from their third album (This is Happening, 2010), “Dance Yrself Clean” and listened a bit more but HATED some of the songs, particularly “Drunk Girls". Then one day, many more years later, in Rubengera’s kitchen (ah, good ole Rwanda…), something sad-ish had just happened (some folks moved back to America) and "Someone Great" came up on shuffle while I was cleaning and I fucking fell in love. So, anything could happen and I would totally get any of it. But, as good ole Wendall Berry says, “Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias. Say that your main crop is the forest that you did not plant, that you will not live to harvest.”- a section from Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front. So, all that I can do is trace my journey for you and see what happens. There’s a good chance you’ll just never get into it. But, if this deep dive is  successful, you’ll hopefully find yourself veering off of my instructions at some point and might never come back to them again, developing your own relationship with different songs than me and loving them in your own way. For that reason I present these as bullet points and suggestions rather than a step-by-step guide. Start from the top or pick and choose, your choice! Bold and underlined  indicate when I listened to a song, as opposed to just a reference to a song.

  • Daft Punk

    • Other bobs and bits of LCD Soundsystem

    • Listen to the album, “LCD Soundsystem”, all the way through a few times

    • Have no idea who 90% of the bands mentioned in Losing My Edge are but wish that you did and are really happy about knowing who Gil Scott-Heron is

    • Put it down if you’re not into it, maybe never come back!

  • Dance Yrself Clean

    • Maybe listen to the album, “This is Happening” all the way through a few times, maybe not

    • It’ll be pretty tough to get past the second tune, Drunk Girls

    • Skip around a bit, hoping to catch something you like as much as “Dance Yrself Clean"

    • Put it down if you’re not into it, maybe never come back!

    • But keep some LCD in the playlist mixes, just to see what might happen...

  • Someone Great

    • Something sort of bittersweet happened to you? Maybe a friend moved out of town? Maybe your cat died? Throw Someone Great on and help yourself feel better

    • Wonder, what’s the deal with this band… ?!

    • Watch the music video for Home

    • Add Tribulations to your intense/club dance mix

  • Something’s developing here…

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Finally, I really think you can appreciate and love LCD by both playing their stuff on shuffle (because each song is a different relationship) or by listening to the albums all of the way through. Another reason they’re amazing! They don’t give no fucks how you love them, as long as it’s fucking genuine. Enjoy! I hope the relationship is a fruitful one!


Justin Mullikin appreciates losing himself to dance, the aesthetics of a good bathroom and Broken Social Scene in a safari plane. 

The Appreciator
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