Carry On My Wayward Hipsters: LCD Soundsystem Passes the Torch

With LCD Soundsystem playing their last ever gigs this week in New York, it feels as though a bookend is being slid into place on NYC's Decade of the Hipster. Fitting that LCD should be winding it all up at Madison Square Garden, anathema to everything indie kids ever pretended to stand for -- after all, LCD's James Murphy made it clear from the get-go what he thought of the swelling Zeitgeist when, in "Losing My Edge," he sang, "I'm losing my edge to the art-school Brooklynites in little jackets and borrowed nostalgia for the unremembered 80's." 0diggsdigg
Perhaps even more appropriate is that while LCD is burning down the house at MSG, one of Murphy’s most treasured progeny, Holy Ghost!, will be playing even further uptown, on West 56th Street, opening for Cut Copy at Terminal 5 this Friday and Saturday nights. The Brooklyn duo, consisting of Alex Frankel and Nick Millhiser, signed to Murphy’s DFA label to glowing praise from the boss - a useful form of promotion, to say the least. Their utterly infectious eponymous debut album (out 4/12) is in thrall to nothing particularly trendy. Rather, they manage to flit effortlessly between blatant disco romps ("Say My Name"), exuberant, Motown-ish pop gems ("Jam For Jerry"), cool funk ("Static on the Wire,” “Some Children") and stern but catchy electro-pop ("Do It Again").
Perhaps the hippest thing about them is how little they seem to care about how hip they are. Which, of course, reminds us a little of…well, James Murphy. Still, it’s hard to imagine these tunes not tearing up the most precociously cool dancefloors from Greenpoint to Glasgow all summer.