I'm usually a ""glass is half empty"" kind of guy. I don't think that makes me cynical, just pragmatic in that I like to see production where others are contented by stagnancy. That's exactly why I hate watching soccer games— I can't bear to watch anything that might not have a clear loser (or winner, whatever). They say ties are like kissing your sister, and though I love my sister dearly I never kiss her unless my glass of Wild Turkey is well past the point where it could be construed as half-anything. But still, in real life, sometimes those polar distinctions are actually one and the same.
And this is where I get to LCD Soundsystem. The widely beloved, unimpeachably awesome troupe led by a man who has enough gray hair to pass for most of our fathers just announced they will perform their final show this coming April 2. It's heart-rending news for everyone who fashions themselves ""fun"" these days. Ever since James Murphy got slapped around and name-checked somewhere around 60 bands on their 2002 debut single, ""Losing My Edge,"" he's been the foremost producer of hip pop music that combines enough infectious hooks to appeal to a wide base with enough hipster nut-flexes to retain even the most pretentious of music hacks. He's written three of our generation's most powerful records. And it's never going to happen again.
But after this past Sunday, even the most curmudgeonly of us (me, maybe) can find some reason to take solace: If LCD Soundsystem break up now, then they'll never devolve into the washed-up act singing grossly out of key during halftime at the Super Bowl.
I don't mean to get carried away here. Bruce Springsteen and Prince both put on high-level halftime performances within recent memory, after all, and it's perfectly reasonable to think future acts won't be as aged as the Who were last year. But that Black Eyed Peas disaster was the direct counterpoint to LCD Soundsystem's very existence.
Let me clear the air. I liked the Peas' light show, which turned the cheering audience into something like a dumbed-down, anthropomorphized Daft Punk setup. But the rest of it—the actual performance part, that is—was a different story.
The most resonant part came during that song where the Peas sing ""futuristically"" by rhyming inanimate objects with onomatoepeia when Fergie yelled, ""I'm so 2008/ You're so two-thousand-and-late,"" and therein ostensibly admits that her biggest claim to fame is having a supporting role in a 2007 Robert Rodriguez film (that said, ""Grindhouse"" was the most ballin' cinematic experience of all time).
Their off-base performance evoked the old and tired ""better to burn out than fade away"" rhetoric, but I don't believe everything is so black-and-white. Case in point: the other popular indie act to call it quits this week, the White Stripes. The ambiguous partners were vastly more popular than LCD Soundsystem ever will be (after all, they were named the best band of the past decade by this very newspaper), yet they hung up their red-and-whites to no huge dismay because, well, they haven't done anything together for almost four years. In the grand scheme of things, their delay in productivity isn't going to have any huge effect on their legacy, but it does deny them their moment. It steals their big opportunity to stride right in to a sold-out Madison Square Garden and captivate the biggest audience in popular music. Instead, it's LCD Soundsystem who laid their cards down while they were holding a flush and have taken the mantle as the biggest band in the world at this moment.
Murphy was always too self-aware and cognizant of the scene around him to diffuse into irrelevancy—that would negate the very ground the band stood on. In other words, Murphy was always too smart, too mastered at his craft to lose out in the artist-fan dichotomy. Make no mistake: We are the clear losers, because they're dictating history while none of us are going to hear another LCD Soundsystem record. But put on Sound of Silver and hear that first tilted piano line of ""All My Friends"" and it's hard to feel too defeated. We're losers because it's over, sure; but we're all winners for it ever having happened. Their big moment in the spotlight was always going to end, and on April 3 it will, while we're left with their (and the White Stripes') lasting impact for eternity. That's the way media works—we always win. But major kudos to LCD Soundsystem for being able to reach their end while including themselves in the winners' circle.
Per office request this article was edited to reflect Murphy's work in pop music with so-called ""hip pop"" bands, rather than hip-hop bands as was mistakenly inserted in print. We apologize for this mistake.
