This Is Happening

About

As the mastermind behind LCD Soundsystem, James Murphy has always knowingly played with rock-star trope. So when he and his entourage were spotted around Hollywood dressed in head-to-toe white in the summer of 2009, it was clear the outfit’s third full-length would be the time-honored LA album. Always on the nose, Murphy set up shop in a dilapidated mansion in Laurel Canyon that had once been the home of Errol Flynn, and where super-producer (and current owner) Rick Rubin had famously recorded the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ seminal <i>Blood Sugar Sex Magik</i>. (It was also rumored that Harry Houdini had lived in the house, giving it a haunted reputation that members of the LCD entourage did little to dispel.) Throughout the recording of what would become 2010’s <i>This Is Happening</i>, Murphy and his housemates covered a wall with Polaroids of various hipster luminaries who’d dropped by the house for late-night shenanigan. The resulting album pays tribute to another famously haunted LA transplant: David Bowie. His influence can be found all over <i>This Is Happening</i>, from the louche strut of “Somebody’s Calling Me”—a sonic homage to Bowie’s “Nightclubbing” collaboration with Iggy Pop—to the cover image, which recalls the art of Bowie’s <i>Lodger</i> album. Another parallel with late-1970s Berlin-era Bowie is that the famously polyamorous star had recently become estranged from his wife Angie—and Murphy was still dealing with a divorce before he began writing the songs on <i>This Is Happening</i>. His feelings about romance at that time can be gleaned from lyrics like “Love is a murderer” (from “I Can Change”), while his complicated relationship with another consort, the music busine, is neatly summed up in the title of “You Wanted A Hit.” (The punchline? “But maybe we don’t do hit.”) .

via Apple Music

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