The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Wednesday, September 6, 2017 — 5A
Arts
DFA
James Murphy of LCD Soundsystem singing his little heart out
LCD returns with other-
wordly ‘american dream’
LCD Soundsystem’s first album since their reunion doesn’t
disappoint with Murphy contemplating love, loss and age
The
greatest
tragedy,
it would seem, is to waste
your youth. To fail to live
with urgency, to stay home,
sober, alone. I, in the middle
of my youth, feel the tug of
expectation acutely, the push
to model my life on the pictures
of youth I see in movies and
hear in pop songs.
James Murphy, whose youth
was behind him before he ever
made music with a band called
LCD Soundsystem, calls those
pictures of youth what they
are: lies. But lies he still finds
himself falling for.
Time — and its inextricable
relationship with age — is at
the heart of american dream,
LCD
Soundsystem’s
first
album since their calculated
2011 “break-up.” Murphy, now
47, wades through the debris
of middle age — lost love, dead
friends, unactualized dreams—
on an album that is at once
textbook LCD Soundsystem
and
something
completely
new.
Both LCD Soundsystem and
the world they make music in
are different beasts than they
were when the band bid us
all farewell for the first time
in 2011. And to those who are
caught up in the betrayal of a
band they love getting back
together I say:
So
what?
I’d
want to hear
the complaints
if this album
felt
like
a
rushed
post-
script. But it
doesn’t.
With
american
dream,
LCD
Soundsystem
doesn’t
want
to rewrite their
past, but rather
make sense of
their
present.
Sometimes, the
only way you
can make sense
of a world on
the
brink
of
collapse is to
make art about
it. Sometimes,
that
means
getting
the
band
back
together.
Seven
years
later,
we’re still dealing with the
manic, meticulous brain of
the singular, ineffable James
Murphy. “tonite,” the album’s
third single and centerpiece, is
sonically the most reminiscent
of the band’s earlier albums.
With its synthy, repetitive beat
and cheeky yet earnest lyrics,
it’s peak LCD Soundsystem.
But, like the rest of the album,
it’s more vulnerable and darker
than we’ve ever seen them.
Ever anxious, Murphy is
increasingly
self-aware.
As
much as he laments the modern
world, he calls himself out
for that — “Oh good gracious
/ I sound like my mom,” he
quips. And, who exactly is
he addressing when he sings:
“You’re missing a party that
you’ll never get over / You hate
the idea that you’re wasting
your youth”? It feels like he’s
talking to me and
also to himself.
Because,
like
its
creators,
american
dream
refuses
to
be
any
one
thing.
It’s art rock and
disco-punk
and
electronica.
It’s
post-swan
song.
It’s
a
rebirth
that’s obsessed with death,
a beginning comprised of a
series of endings.
Murphy is, as he describes
himself in the song, “the
hobbled veteran of the disk
shop
inquisition.”
He’s
a
reminder of some bygone era
when manic music fandom
took up physical space. On the
album, he clings to the vestiges
of something else millennials
allegedly killed. But he doesn’t
seem to blame the younger
generation for their murderous
evolution of the industry.
That
being
said, american
dream
has
a
weight
to
it
that other LCD
Soundsystem
albums
don’t.
The
cultural
and
musical
references feel
like
eulogies
for a time and
a
sound
that
doesn’t
quite
exist anymore.
And Murphy’s
major
sonic
influences
—
Lou
Reed,
David
Bowie,
Leonard Cohen
— have all died
in
the
years
since the band’s
last album. On
the
album’s
final
track,
“black screen,”
Murphy
eulogizes
Bowie
and
laments
his
own
inability
to pinpoint his late friend’s
location in the cosmos, the
“black screen” of outer space.
Bowie is all over american
dream. Murphy creates an
otherworldly sound similar to
that of the “Berlin Trilogy.”
“oh baby,” the album’s opener,
floats
dreamy
and
hazy,
signaling from its first notes
that american dream inhabits
a space far above the earth.
And for the most part, the
album stays there, hovering
high in the sky, until the long
comedown at the end of “black
screen” floats it back down.
With its pared down poetry
and repetitive word choice, “oh
baby” is lyrically classic James
Murphy. But it starts the album
in a more melancholic place
than we’ve seen him really
go before. While american
dream
rides
an
emotional
rollercoaster
from
anger
to
grief
to
brief
moments of joy,
melancholy is the
real
emotional
backbone.
There’s
sadness
in the sting of
lines like: “I must
admit: I miss the laughing / But
not so much you” from “how
do you sleep?” a song about
Murphy’s
falling
out
with
former friend and business
partner.
And,
halfway
through
2017, what is more bitterly
melancholic than the American
Dream? And specifically the
one Murphy paints on the
album’s titular track. Murphy
is old, a little tired, but still
performing a type of youth
rooted in the disappearing
culture of the early 2000’s New
York rock scene in which the
band was born and nurtured.
Murphy pokes fun at failed
revolutions, his own age and
the unbearable weight of the
modern world. It’s heavy, but
buoyed by a sparkling synthy
sound and airy vocals, and the
faintest spark of hope.
Such goes much of the
album. Darkness sounds like
light and sadness sounds like
something akin to joy. It’s
Murphy doing what he does
best — ten or twelve things at
once — both in production (his
credits on the album include
producer,
writer,
vocals,
guitar, synth, bass guitar,
drums, bongos, glockenspiel
and mixing to name a few) and
substance.
And it’s this ability to do
so much with so little that
makes Murphy’s music so
powerful. His music makes me
feel known, seen, understood,
despite
our
circumstantial
differences.
I
feel
old
sometimes, although I know I
am not — too old to be young
and too young to be old. I feel
confused and left out and left
behind by a world that seems
to be spiraling out of control.
american dream transcends
delineations of age or race or
gender because what it gets at,
above all else, is the fact that,
at the end of the day, we’re all
just stuck moving forward in
time.
MADELEINE GAUDIN
Senior Arts Editor
ALBUM REVIEW
Fox Searchlight
“Patti Cake$” is an underdog story at heart
New ‘Patti Cake$’ gets
by on heart and hip hop
The film chronicles the story of a poor, struggling Patti
and her efforts to become a hip hop star despite her roots
It’s probably safe to say that
“Patti Cake$” won’t be the most
original movie anyone sees this
year. It owes far too much of its
story, themes and characters
to “8 Mile” and other similar
underdog stories for that to
be true. It also won’t win any
awards for unpredictability.
From scene one, the ending
and the path the script will
take there are plainly obvious.
What sets “Patti Cake$” apart
from other movies of its type is
its heart and just how genuine
it feels. It’s a movie where it’s
impossible not to feel for and
root for its atypical cast of
aspiring rap artists. It’s not
perfect by any
stretch of the
imagination,
but the movie
is every bit as
earnest as its
unceasingly
lovable leads.
The
main
story
follows
Patti
Dombrowski
(Danielle
MacDonald,
“Every
Secret
Thing”), a plus-
sized
white
woman
living
in New Jersey
who
dreams
of becoming a
rapper. Between
dealing
with
her
overbearing,
alcoholic
mother
(Bridget
Everett,
“Trainwreck”)
and
caring
for
her
wheelchair-bound
grandmother (Cathy Moriarty,
“The Double”), she writes her
own music and plans to record
it with her best friend, Jheri
(Siddharth Dhanajay in his
feature debut), in the hopes of
escaping her impoverished life.
Again,
the
lifeblood
of
“Patti Cake$” is the main cast.
MacDonald is endearing from
the start as Patti (known by
the
moniker
“Killa
P”),
a
character
with
big dreams and
the guts to reach
for them, even
as
everything
around her seems
to be telling her
to stop. Like the best underdog
performances,
MacDonald
layers the optimism with an
underlying tragedy, and Patti is
more realistic – and therefore
relatable – for it. It’s Everett,
however, who ends up being
the highlight as
Patti’s
mother,
Barb,
who
once
shared
her
daughter’s
dream of making
it
big
in
the
music
industry.
Playing
Barb
with a mixture
of
brokenness,
cruelty and real
love,
Everett
creates
a
character whose
relationship with
her
daughter
may
rank
as
one of the best
and
ultimately
rewarding of its
kind this year.
As is befitting
a movie that is, at least in
part, a musical, the songs
are fantastic. If nothing else,
audiences should walk away
from “Patti Cake$” with an
appreciation for just what a
talented
rapper
MacDonald
is. All of the best scenes of
the movie are built around
the music, whether it’s the
first recording session where
Patti, Jheri and Patti’s scene-
stealing
grandmother
team
up with reclusive anarchist
Basterd
(Mamadou
Athie,
“The Get Down”)
to produce their
first track “PBNJ”
or the emotional,
energetic
finale.
The film may well
be worth seeing
for the soundtrack
alone.
Unfortunately, without the
music it occasionally feels like
the movie lacks a backbone or
glue to hold the whole thing
together. The editing loses its
sense of rhythm, particularly
during overcut dialogue scenes,
and the cinematography —
which trades in psychedelic
rap
video
imagery
at
the
best of times — tends to go
for the increasingly popular
“Moonlight” look. Many scenes
are shot in handheld, shallow
focus close-ups in an attempt
to mimic the gorgeous, Oscar-
nominated cinematography of
last year’s Best Picture winner,
but as in many other movies,
it’s
more
distracting
here
than anything else. It’s hard
to feel for what’s happening
onscreen when there are times
you can barely tell what you’re
supposed to be looking at.
Still,
“Patti
Cake$”
is
charming enough — both on
the basis of its leads and its
music — that it should be seen.
It is a movie that has been done
before and will undoubtedly
be
done
again,
but
what
problems it has are more than
outweighed by the care and
love that went into crafting
this particular story. Other
underdog movies should take
note.
JEREMIAH VANDERHELM
Daily Arts Writer
american
dream
LCD
Soundsystem
DFA
“Patti Cake$”
Michigan Theater
Fox Searchlight
Pictures
FILM REVIEW
Murphy is old, a
little tired, but still
performing a type
of youth rooted in
the disappearing
culture of the early
2000’s New York
rock scene in which
the band was born
and nurtured
Unfortunately,
without the music
it occasionally
feels like the
movie lacks a
backbone or glue
to hold the whole
thing together
“PUSH ME TO THE EDGE. ALL MY
FRIENDS ARE DEAD. - LIL UZI VERT” -
SAL DIGIOIA
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