LCD Soundsystem: "Drunk Girls"

Keep in mind as you’re listening to LCD Soundsystem’s first single in three years that James Murphy is forty years old. Before I say anything else, and before you write to illustrate how my soul is dead, let me concede first that the mind-numbing stupidity of this song may not imply that the forthcoming album will also be mind-numbingly stupid—“North American Scum” and most of Sound of Silver (2007) was stupid, and yet “All My Friends” was not—so we’ve still got something to look forward to, hopefully. Let me also concede that to imply that a forty year old man should not sing about drunk girls may constitute ageism in addition to tact and etiquette and just generally not being creepy and a little petty.

Those are the only two concessions I’m willing to make. Creepy Uncle New York has written yet another song that, lyrically, is only three or four short steps from Weird Al Yankovic and, stylistically, is reminiscent of something universally understood to be cool—in this case the Velvet Underground’s “White Light/White Heat.” I won’t pretend to understand coolness in all of its fickle disparity, but it does seem to me like the Velvet Underground were cool for reasons in addition to: living in New York City, being invited to parties, being around drunk girls. and dripping with cynicism about the whole thing. Cool was withholding something, leaving some mystery intact. CUNY, by contrast, is explicitly locating himself at the center of some bullshitty, paper-thin concept of validation and then calling it bullshit and paper thin. It may be the most damning evidence yet of how much he despises the audience to whom his music appeals most.

Irony is no longer a defense for this guy. It’s been years now of CUNY shooting fish in barrels, pointing to notions of authority in cool and style, making fun of their hypocrisy and arbitrariness, and just generally having epiphanies reserved for people in their early twenties. That he continues to draw sustenance from the same conceptual currencies he writes about being malnourished by is now, like him—like me, like all of us—getting old. Rather than find some profundity in that fact, “Drunk Girls” is the sound of CUNY refusing to age gracefully.