So everyone has a big boner over the new LCD Soundsystem album This is Happening, but my dick’s only half hard. 
Murphy channels a Disintegration-era Robert Smith with a little Morrissey thrown in for controversy. LCD makes a sharp left down New Wave lane on Drunk Girls and I Can Change conjures Erasure. That’s not to say the record doesn’t feel new, it does. 
This is Happening passes as a decent dance party but definitely not a club-banger, and perhaps a little unworthy of all the hyperbolic praise. If you like New Order or Hot Chip, you’ll probably like this too.
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Filed in MUSIC
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Tags: Disintegration, Drunk Girls, Erasure, Hot Chip, I Can Change, James Murphy, LCD Soundsystem, Morrissey, New Order, Robert Smith, This Is Happening
Wednesday, March 31st, 2010
Many whiny white boys will watch the Ian Curtis biopic Control for the music, but I think it plays best as a cautionary tale reminding women why they shouldn’t marry that mopey disaffected musician they banged in their late teens/early twenties.
Let me summarize: Ian Curtis wanted to be a rockstar. Ian Curtis formed a band called Joy Division (named after a WWII brothel frequented by Nazis). Ian Curtis married the first girl he ever loved, Debbie, before either reached twenty. Joy Division garnered a following. Debbie got pregnant with their daughter Natalie. Ian predictably started banging a Belgian jump-off named Annik. Ian suffered from epilepsy. Even though his band landed a North American tour, Ian was depressed. Debbie found out about Annik and wanted a divorce. Just days before Joy Division’s first U.S. tour, Ian begged Debbie not to divorce him. She refused, so he hung himself in her kitchen.
I appreciate Joy Division, after all, without Joy Division there would be no New Order, but committing suicide at 23 and leaving behind a wife, daughter, mistress, and a band on the brink of greatness is pretty fucking selfish. Enjoy the brooding Ian Curtis types in your twenties and then leave them there where they belong, but take the music with you.
