By Billy Florio

There are certain bands that you wish were more popular than they actually are. These are artists that make amazing music that should be guidelines for how their specific genre should sound like. For the genre of electronica, LCD Soundsystem is this band.

LCD Soundsystem, along with production team The DFA (James Murphy and Tim Goldsworthy) have been gaining fame inside the indie world ever since the 2002 single “Losing My Edge/Beat Connection.” Since then, a rule was made by the Music Critic Kings that any critic that talks about LCD Soundsystem must mention within the first two paragraphs that “Losing My Edge” is a laundry list of pretentious indie kid influences, delivered ala Mark E. Smith vocal styles. LCD Soundsystem happily wears their influences on their sleeves, giving more shout-outs to everyone than Kevin Smith in the credits to Clerks. Anyone who does not follow these rules will face harsh penalties (like having to review the next Hillary Duff album). So with that criteria complete, let’s talk about the actual album.

LCD Soundsystem is a double album, the first disc being their full length debut and the second being a compilation of all their past singles. On these discs, Murphy shows off everything that LCD Soundsystem can do. With the opening song “Daft Punk Is Playing At My House,” Murphy not only makes the best new material on the album, but also does a near perfect impression of Daft Punk (but while never actually copying Daft Punk). What Murphy and Goldsworthy did (along with most of the other bands under the DFA label) is create a new style of music called dance-punk. It’s a combination of electronic and post-punk influences (kind of like the Fall or PiL, but instead of Mark E. Smith or Johnny Lydon leading the band, it’s Giorgio Moroder).

Murphy bends the dance-punk style to resemble other bands’ styles as well. “Too Much Love” shows great Talking Heads influence, while “Movement” is pure garage rock. “Great Release” is an exercise in Brian Eno style ambiance and “Never As Tired As When I’m Waking Up” is such a perfect imitation of Pink Floyd that it could have been right off of Dark Side Of The Moon.

The second disc as a whole is probably better than the first. It contains all their previous critically praised material, such as “Give It Up” and both the “Crass” and “Pretentious” versions of “Yeah.” Overall, the album is a prime example of what electronica should sound like. Just wish more people know about them.

The Chronicle gives ´LCD Soundsystem´, by LCD Soundsystem four out of five stars.