MILES OF TRANE:YES. It is wonderful and I wish I had a higher rating than YES but that's as high as my scale goes. Pitchfork is justified in its enthusiastic rating with a scarce nine-plus. Am I more enthusiastic than when I first heard his last album Sound of Silver? Hard to say because that was my first real exposure to LCD Soundsystem, and so certainly there were fewer expectations than for this album. Though I never discussed Sound of Silver with O:Barr I instinctively knew he would love it and so included a song off it in a mix in his honor on 8Tracks. Thus I'm not disarmed by This Is Happening as perhaps with the previous one. I think this one has more liveliness of a sort, a kind of dead liveliness, so I'm still frozen in place listening to it and thus it is fully harmonious with my soul. I wanted to be dark and dreary tonight, and this album left me free to go to my lonely space, but it wanted to come along and I let it. And then we danced. In place. I'm not coming back.
Pitchfork: Album Reviews: LCD Soundsystem: This Is Happening 9.2/10.0 (Best new music designation)
This Is Happening reviews at Metacritic.com 85/100 (universal acclaim) With something like 30 reviews aggregated at Metacritic you know (1) it is a very important release, and (2) there would be a few naysayers to bring the score down. Three of the reviews give it a perfect 100, and the next seven are in the 90s. So it was those who do not understand what is going on that keep the aggregate score below 90. This is still an impressive score when so many critical reviews are included. Whether he continues under the LCD Soundsystem banner or not, we'll be paying attention to James Murphy for a long time.
