Get Innocuous (7:11)
Opening with a second-generation ‘Losing My Edge’ drum pattern, and gradually augmenting the same with assorted autobass riffs and etc, the record shows a heavy debt to Bowie/Eno atmospherics from the get-go. Minimal, muscular, lots of builds and spaces.

Time To Get Away (4:11)
Murphy’s mannered falsetto is soon accessorised with disco-not-disco percussion and loose elastic bass… “I can’t believe I used to talk to you,” he despairs, as I run out of things to say.

North American Scum (5:25)
New wave gang klang, the first recognisable LCD monologue on the record - paranoia re: xenomania (not the production team, unfortunately - there’s a beef I’d like to see) giving way to an almost glammy chorus of (more or less) synchronised yelps troubling the upper registers. Will clearly be brash, unabashed tour anthem.

Someone Great (6:25)
Pretty, clicky arrangement that harnesses pulsing electro flux to percolating synth bleeps, real or virtual glockenspiel and a more downbeat but straightforwardly sung vocal. A sophisticated update of an eighties electroballad, essentially. Um, emotions.

All My Friends (7:37)
Relentless piano vamp. We’re trading eighties references in the office now (in a non-derogatory way). This has something of a made-over Joy Division feel to it - perhaps very early New Order before they went Technicolor widescreen..?

Us v Them (8:29)
Shunting emphasis back toward dancefloor dynamics and the hectoring soapbox style we’ve decided we like best - and then halfway through start chanting in that smoooooth style that ran through Heroes‘ East European anthems like a long train.

Watch The Tapes (3:55)
Punky scuzz, jittery rhythms and the sense all of this would sound very different very much louder (we daren’t give it any more juice, the cursing plumbers next door complained before…)

Sound Of Silver (7:07)
“Sound of silver / Talk to me / Makes you want to feel like a teenager / Until you remember the feelings of / A real life emotional teenager / Then you think again…” Minimal, subdued, nice abstracted low choral drone and various microbleeps.

New York I Love You (5:35)
A weary, almost Bacharach-flavour piano bar ballad to end. “Take me off your mailing list,” he wails as we meander (via a dramatic last burst of guitar bombast) to a close.

B.A.S.I.C.A.L.L.Y. It’s, y’know, solid, classy, isn’t going to throw you with any hairpin bends (unless you were expecting a monstertruck love-in of acid house eruptions) and demonstrates pretty effectively that LCD have always been more about detail and nuance than stunt and gimmick. It’s not going to redefine the way you dance but it’s a middleweight supplement to the first album (note: album - not singles collection). The only question is whether this is the entire set, or there are more brutal white labels (or left-handed versions) being readied as KOs and killer apps for the world outside yr urbane bedroom…

Posted on Monday, November 20th, 2006by kicking_k