:: Track Listing

1. 45:33

:: Record Review

LCD Soundsystem

45:33
(iTunes exlusive; 2007)

Rating: 80%
Combined Rating: 75%


Last year, Conrad Amenta published an article on this website called "Bedding the 'Sellout'." He wrote that artists should be more proactive in the commercialization of their music, rather than hold fast to some outdated notions of purity that would be defiled by their presence in a commercial.

This happened in the wake of two interesting moments in the worlds of ads and semi-underground music: The White Stripes agreed to appear in a commercial for Coca-Cola, and Nike blatantly stole the cover of Minor Threat's self-titled album (which also appears on the CD compilation) for their skate-shoe ad run. You couldn't ask for a better example of diametrically opposing positions on the music-in-ads issue than the pragmatic Jack White and idealistic Ian MacKaye. But there were a lot more interesting things about about these two cases. Both were instances of explicit iconography blending: one would be hard pressed to find a better connotation of skate-punk culture than that photo of MacKaye's shaved head. But for the White Stripes, who've made a career cultivating feigned childhood innocence -- or maybe soured adulthood trying to fit into that innocence like a fat man does his varsity track jacket -- they could've hardly picked a better representation of that then Coke, with all its baggage of Childhood or Pop Culture or America or Everything Wrong with America or Disposable Pop Culture as Indispensable Ingredients to Brilliant Pop Culture (it could also just be, as White joked, "they had a similar color scheme"). Perhaps more striking: they only happened on the internet. Nike's ad run was exclusive to its website, where word of mouth was bound to travel quickly. The Coke commercial also ran exclusively on the internet.

I have my problems with Conrad's piece (first: that Levi's commercial sucks), but it provokes a lot of good questions whose answers demand more thought than most are willing to give it. One has to do with context: shouldn't an artist be right to be concerned where their work is seen and heard? Certainly, the cultural stakes are significantly lower for Coldplay's "Clocks" than they were for, say, Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Fortunate Son." But the significance imputed onto a work by popular consensus is meaningless to this question. So what if one reminds you of your girlfriend and one stokes the flames of class inequalities? Pop culture artifacts, even the bad ones, rely on carefully crafted iconography, from nuts to bolts: image is everything, and so are first impressions. It's not that a commercial cheapens the concomitant song, anymore than its proximity to your romantic relationship inflates its meaning. It's that Chris Martin can control one and not the other. Do you think Jack White could've done the Coke spot if it couldn't be safely ignored on the internet? If music didn't have a Pavlovian effect on memory, advertisers wouldn't be interested, and neither would musicians.

These are more than just idle ruminations, or anyway bought on by more than the fact that the work presently under discussion was commissioned by Nike. On one hand one can look at LCD Soundsystem's 45:33 (which actually lasts 45:58) as a forty-six minute commercial for the shoe company. This would be a pretty ludicrous position to take, since their name isn't mentioned once in the span of the song. What strikes me about this album, more than the continued blending of commerce and art, is the context that LCDS leader James Murphy has placed this music in. It is only one track, exclusive to the internet, and it is meant as a soundtrack for the specific activity of running. Murphy has near complete control over our listening experience: we won't skip over anything, we'll be listening to it on headphones, and he knows what we'll be doing when we're listening to it.

One gets pretty high flown ideas when they think about the implications of all of this (I've been raving to anyone who would listen that the MP3 has not only made the "album" obsolete, but this specific one has now beat it at its own game: not only is 45:33 consistent, thematic, conceptual and self contained, you can't even skip over anything). But then you also have to listen to the thing. While the music itself doesn't exactly break any boundaries (outside of length), it remains pretty excellent; falling somewhere between trance and disco with elements of Kraftwerk, this is some of the most playful, inventive and powerful stuff he's done. The genre-sampling and mixing is much more natural here than on LCD Soundsystem, probably because he doesn't stray too far from electronic and dance music (like, at all). The music is designed to zone out to, or to make you feel pumped about running, but should you design to listen there's some impressive mechanics at work.

Notes from a jog: things start with loosening up, a Korg arpeggio with the tempo steadily increasing, the equivalent to an orchestra running through some scales. Hand claps introduce the beat, and we're off. Pianos chime, guitars skitter and someone begins to sing "you can't hide," (because, you know, you can run, har har). This is the first section, and Murphy thinks easing into it is a good idea; I agree. The sun soon starts to come out with some choirs, an additional drum kit is added and things are starting to cook. All in all it doesn't sound too dissimilar from a disco remix of any old ballad. Then things give way to a throb, and the Kraftwerk section starts, like a cross between Trans-Europe Express (1977) and Raymond Scott's brilliant 1950s/60s electronic work. Or maybe it just sounds like the Postal Service. In any event, it definitely helps to induce the zoning effect: I can see the sirens are rising and falling underneath that pulsing bass line, which sort of describes the pace of my running, my pulse and breathing.

The chimes fade out around the seventeen minute mark and, I take this as my cue to take a breather. When the bass line drops about a minute later, I'm off again; things were cooking before, now they're starting to burn. Electric clavichords and horns and a slowed-down voice talking about "my favorite song," are enhancing the endorphin push I'm feeling, sounding like Sly and the Family Stone reimagined for post-millennial disco. If one section stands above any other, it would be this one, smack dab in the great part of the run. Soon a puddle of horns fall over each other, and I take this as a cue to calm down. But other horns herald a skittish, nervous restarting, and the tempo increases. I think I can do without this section, supposedly enhancing the last minute race to the finish line; I think of nothing so much of when your time starts to run out in Super Mario Bros. There's some great dissonant qualities to this section, though, utilizing sax skronk and backwards drumming with equal aplomb. But at 37:30 it's overtaken by Eno-esque chimes and organs. Good, now I can slow down; funny that my legs seem to be walking absent any message from my brain, gliding across the Red Bank pavement in what truly feels like an out of body experience. The music makes me feel like I'm floating, and it dawns on me: James Murphy must be as out of shape as I am.

45:33 isn't about to settle the debate between art and commerce, not least because a) it's not strictly a commercial and b) it's really fucking good. Lord knows there isn't any shortage of examples of Nike's sort of patronage in the music world, especially in the Classical era. (I have to make an aside, and a not wholly irrelevant one, that no one raises these sorts of questions about the great records Rachel's makes when it is partially subsidized by public funding: how truly independent could they be, etc.) What makes the track -- or is this a song? a mix? a file? -- succeed is that it does so in the world of its own making, no less than the fantasias of target="_new">Blueberry Boat (2003) or In the Aeroplane Under the Sea (1998). Like those records, it is an expertly crafted and detailed work which accomplishes total immersion in the listener. Whether it makes me want to buy some Dunks is another question. Christopher Alexander :: 19 February 2007 |