TheCulturalFront: Music

This is the second album from New yorks LCD Soundsystem and it is every bit as good as the debute. It is smart, edgy, beat laden and very very cool - in short everything you want from a dance record.

As ever James Murphy ooozes cool New york sophistication from every ounce of his vocals and music, producing an album steeped in traditional New York dance/disco/electronica with an edgy modernist feel to bring it bang up to date. House beats are fussed with dazed disco fineness to produce the finest, most beautiful mix of heady, intoxicating electronica you are likely to hear this year.

Get Innocuous is an infectious house tune with a pounding bass line to power it, and you, along. Someone Great is dark and brooding with hints of Les Rythme Digital, while All My Friends has a lovely lo/fi quality about it with vocals reminisent of Flaming Lips with piano to match. Sound Of Silver though is possibly the stand out track. A beautiful, minimalist spaced out beaty track with heavy dark vocals swimming in and out of this lovely mix of sounds, percussion and beats.

One of the best things about this album is that, while maintaining the essence of LCD soundsystem and the smart lyricism of its predessor, this album has its own unique sound and feel to it. Sound of Silver will be equally at home in the indie disco and the dance club combing to perfection everything that is good and pure about dance/disco, lo/fi and punk . It is a unique combination of dancable and intelligent. For those in the know it is a hybred of everyone's favourite dance, punk and hip hop referrence points while for those who don't it is an awsome part album, bound to fill dance floors the world wide.

The lyrics are smart, thoughtful and amusing while the music is well crafted, intelligent and furious. Keyboards, guitars, beats, funky riffs and all manner of other background noises come together in one fabulous crescendo of archingly cool, NYdance floor coolness, each song its own power house of furiously, ever moving and surging sound. The Album is like High Fidelity music shop nerdyness meets uber cool underground DJ, the type who we all aspire to and wish we were as cool as!

This is a powerful message to the kids: Scrap all those indie/electro/rave bands. They will never be as good, as referrencial or original as James Murhpy's LCD Soundsystem. This and this alone is where its at 2007!

Highlights:
Get Innocuous
Someone Great
Sound of Silver
New York, I love you but you're brining me down

So The Rakes have finally released the long awaited follow up to Capture/Release. Unlike the gritty, post punk, post Joy Divison feel of their debut this is a more polished, more mature feeling/sounding album which will cuase mixed reactions among the listening public. It has lost alot of the rawness of Capture/Release but it does seem to show a natural progression in themes and ability which the band themselves will also have gone through since they first emerged in 2005. To use some of the imagery used by the band they have moved from grotty 22 grand jobs and run down one bed flats to the more affluent areas of the East end that only a 28 grand job at least can buy.
But enough of the allergory and poor rip off of a borrowed theme....the songs are good. They have an edgyness and awareness that alot of bands these days lack. Musically they show a greater wealth of influence and reference from hints of Franz Ferdinand to the Strokes to, ofcourse, Joy Division and garage punk without loosing any of that slightly arty, semi-intellectual paranoia we have all come to expect. The music is tight, aggressive and edgy, much like the vocals of Alan Donohoe. Lyrically they maintain their ability to translate the worries of a generation into meaningful song lyrics, referencing all the new world and home grown worries our generation has had to face since Capture/Release: everything from global and home grown terrorism to drunken nights out when we should all be behaving ourselves and, horror of all horrors...mobiles NOT WORKING AS THEY OUGHT TO!.
Seriously though it is the always sneering and slightly paranoid social observation of The Rakes that set them apart from many other bands who claim to be the kings of indie music. Each song on this album is an altogether genuine interpretation of the realities social interaction and hypocrisy. There are not many other bands who can, through the medium of indie music pull together a more vivid or accurate picture of life in 2007 Britain (more specifically London).
The music, lyrics and themes of Ten New Messages work in almost perfect harmony to generate a well orchestrated and natural progression to Capture/Release which should earn the band some well deserved praise. Although some will think they have either betrayed or abandoned their roots to produce a more polished, radio friends, mass market album. However if you spend the time to really listen and absorb this album you will find alot more than this: An album of classic 'tell it like it to live in Britain as a 20 something today' snap shots brought to life by powerful and thoughtful story telling.

Highlights:
The world Was A Mess But His Hair Was Perfect.
Trouble.
When Tom Cruise Cries
Suspicious Eyes.