Top 10 albums you might not know.

No.2. LCD SoundSystem - Sound of Silver

Hey, ever heard the one about the indie band who incorporated a dance direction? Oh, you have? What, like, 1,875,328 times already? This week? Well, you’re not the only one. In fact, if I have to listen to one more person telling me, “Dance music’s not dead, it just learnt to play guitar,” I might just be forced to gouge out my own eyes with a glowstick. Anyway,the idea that you’re somehow breaking boundaries by sticking some bleeps’n’bongos underneath your rock song is laughable. Bloc Party, The Rapture, Klaxons, Hot Chip, Hadouken!, The Futureheads, Calvin Harris, Late Of The Pier, Radiohead, Metronomy, The Twang, … the list of indie bands who’ve mixed the rock with the rhythm in recent times is so wide and varied it makes such a declaration virtually meaningless.

Now I've got that out of the way, let's continue. :)

Funktastic

LCD Soundsystem's James Murphy is chiefly regarded as a man with a gargantuan record collection. Less appreciated is the depth of his songwriting, and the unsettling accuracy with which he depicts the fretful ageing hipster whose gargantuan record collection is no longer enough. Beneath the jokes in his signature tune, Losing My Edge, lurks a real fear of growing old and redundant. Amid the dependably thrilling punk-funk (North American Scum) and mercurial Bowie-vs-Underworld art-techno (Get Innocuous), Sound of Silver houses two songs that pack a devastating emotional punch. Someone Great is an addictive techno cut with an unexplained tragedy at its shattered heart, while the spine-tingling, New Order-tinged All My Friends is the sound of midlife stock-taking in the centre of a crowded dancefloor.



This is dance-rock for grown-ups: extraordinary, and not bettered in the genre until Murphy's own This is Happening came out earlier this year.