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Semi-rejected piece submitted to PopMatters a few months ago. Never got around to making all the requested edits, lost interest, it was a non-paying gig, etc.

Panic at the Disco: How James Murphy’s Dance-Art Is Making Art Dance 

I have a fantasy, and in this fantasy James Murphy and I are friends. It is unclear how long we’ve been friends, what the particular dynamics of our friendship are, what sort of social barriers have been removed that would allow us to be friends, or even how we met. Are we neighbors? Did we grow up together? It’s not important. What matters is what we’ve become: kindred spirits obsessed with pop music, an alliance in the name of dance-punk-art and self-aware cool that makes us both incredibly paranoid and prone to rambling.           

So James Murphy (I call him James but not Murph, since that was the name of the drummer in Dinosaur Jr.; that James and I arrive at this at the same time makes us both laugh) and I are in my apartment, which is ideally in London but could be in Chicago or Philadelphia; all we need is a skyline; and this apartment is vaguely decorated with mural-sized posters of art that are somehow obscure and familiar at the same time, comforting yet challenging, and there’s a dismal beige couch that looks like haystacks pushed together, a sort of wrap-around, and on this couch James is sitting cross-legged while I’m leaning forward in a chair, waiting his response to a CD I’ve put on.

Here’s where the fantasy gets muddy: there is no response. I play him “Sometimes” by My Bloody Valentine. I play him “Wake Up” by The Arcade Fire. I play him “Losing My Edge” by his own band. I play him all my favorite records, and even some records I don’t like, but there is no dialogue; we can’t seem to connect verbally. I just can’t honestly imagine what two guys who think they know everything about music would have to say to each other that hasn’t already been said before.

This is a point that rings loud and clear in almost every LCD Soundsystem record. A sort of where-do-we-go-from-here undertone that suggests the only way out is in, as in inward. Looking at ourselves in the context of our narrow culture and the actions of those around us, asking questions we already know the answers to: “Bear in mind / We all fall behind” from “Disco Infiltrator”; “Everybody makes mistakes…” from “Tribulations”; “Nobody’s falling in love / Everybody here needs a shove” from “Beat Connection”; and the best example, found in the crass version of “Yeah”: “Everybody keeps on talking about it / Nobody’s getting it done.”

It’s these communal admissions that produce LCD’s brand of ironic dance rock, at once rhythmic hypnosis and cerebral bitch-slapping. Dance music, traditionally and ideally, is designed as mindless escapism. It’s food for the body; the mind is always elsewhere. It’s nameless, faceless and completely interchangeable. Dance rock of the late ‘80s and early ‘90s attempted one step further, incorporating actual song structures into the fray, but hardly fared much better. (Murphy pointed this out in a Magnet interview from May 2005 where he scoffed at the history of dance rock represented by fleeting bands like EMF and Jesus Jones.)

There is, of course, that obnoxious beat, an incessant pulsing that makes everyone who hears it want to fight. LCD isn’t without it, but theirs is put on with a monkey wrench. The drums in the crass version of “Yeah” sound homemade, organic. They sound real. So do the bassline and the blips and the hiccup synths. The tribal funk breakdown at six and a half minutes in — and then the trashcan-as-percussion at eight minutes-plus — carry all the appeal of a live street band and make useful indulgence of Murphy’s love of weirdly-crafted hip-hop. Other things, like the amazing “Yr City’s a Sucker,” have these chimes and woodblock sounds wrapped in floating, dreamy keyboards and feel like they could end at any moment, until they do, and it’s like you’ve been pulled violently back into reality. These aren’t just beats, they’re instructions for living.

Last year, Village Voice whipping boy Nick Sylvester conducted an experiment with Murphy as part of a Pitchfork feature where Sylvester more or less lived out the fantasy I described above. He played Murphy records, Murphy reacted. There were some odd songs but no odd choices; Nine Inch Nails’ “Closer” made as much sense as Ying Yang Twins’ “The Whisper Song” when you consider how innovative they both sound and how embarrassing it would be to sing either one aloud. What struck me most about their exchange is how a guy with such an appreciation for pop music (that’s Murphy) could rely on the most simplistic elements in his own art: pulse, handclap, cowbell, more pulse, more cowbell. He’s still making thinly veiled dance music. But then it hit me that a good chunk of the LCD/DFA appeal is how well Murphy comes off as the biggest music fan ever. If he’s able to dissect someone else’s stuff with such precision, well, imagine what he’s capable of in due time.

But what Murphy has already managed is impressive not just sonically but aesthetically, especially when you realize Murphy seems like he’s more fascinated with the construct of dance music than he is with actually listening to it. He uses disco beats the way Gang of Four used disco basslines; that is, they’re a tool. It’s an appropriation made even more interesting when you take into account Murphy’s influences, mainly the twisted post-punk that killed off the punk that killed off disco. He’s a Fall guy, channeling Mark E. Smith’s sinus infection vocals perfectly in “Movement” and swinging Public Image guitar whacks in “On Repeat.” (“Tired” is a bonfire party in hell.)

The point of all this isn’t a belated analysis of the LCD record (although it is the kind of album whose merits are better examined in hindsight). The album, coupled with the singles disc as one package, makes a bigger statement of how this thing once called dance punk is really closer to dance-art, and that its documents should be judged individually, free of the associations they conjure and that we’re all too familiar with. Murphy isn’t carrying the weight of a movement on his back, and he’s not setting social fires like John Lydon or Public Enemy or even Sufjan Stevens for that matter, but he’s urgent nonetheless; he’s aware of what we don’t need and he’s careful not to put out mindless dancefloor trash he couldn’t look in the eye in the morning. What he’s doing is still reckless, unpredictable in the way Jane’s Addiction were able to explore on impulse but still have a defined purpose. His is the party everyone wants to be at but only a few are confident they can get into. For the rest of us, we’re left to fantasize.