23. Sound of Silver - LCD Soundsystem

I always feel like I have to rip the albums I love more sometimes, but here's what's ultimately going to be the downfall of this album. Technology. When a band making music such as this, isn't rock based (drums, real bass player, guitar, piano (not keyboard or synth, like a fucking piano) father time always withers away their sound. Find someone electro based band in the earlier aughts, say the Postal Service, and the music gets dated way too quickly.

Go back a little further. Nine Inch Nails was very respected in the 90s, though I was never a big fan. Electro based again. Sure he could put it together life, it's not like it wasn't real instruments, but what was called "Industrial" at the time, had its electro roots. Listen to his best work today, and you can tell the technology he was using is nothing compared to what it is today. Dated. Amateur.

We all know the 80s were the decade of the synthesizer, to the point that the most popular rock groups consisted of grown men wearing make up. The early 80s were the worst of it all. Now, I can't really back this up factually, but I'm going to go out a limb and say there wasn't one pure rock song hit that came out between 1980 and whenever Pyromania or 1984 came out.

Poor Steve Miller was reduced to it. Listen to "Abracadabra", so synthed out. It's actually quite good, and the version I have even has him tripping it out at the end. You can tell Steve is sad inside because his record company knows synth is where's its at and he can't rock anymore.

Even poorer Tom Petty. Did he not come out at the worst possible time? In an era where the nice pure rock of the early 70s somehow evolved into Prog Rock, Aerosmith, or the good shit like the Talking Heads, Petty was trapped all by himself in the late 70s trying to write nice simple rock songs. Then the 80s happened, which was like taking him off the Leper Island of Hawaii, and moving him to the island Tom Hanks is stuck on ... (or did he get off? I always stop watching once he loses Wilson). Anyways, listen to "You Got Lucky" ... way synthed out.

Point is, if Steve Miller and Tom Petty's record companies didn't let them write rock songs in the very early 80s, who's did? Yours?

The point of all this, is LCD Soundsystem has to Beware the Ides of March. If they come back 15 years from now, and keep saying they're retiring in the middle of reunion tours and posting the messages on the time's most significant communicative device, I'm bet you're going to go back to this album and say, "Man, that sounds dated."

... Dire Straits