CD reviews: LCD Soundsystem, The Fall

LCD Soundsystem, "This Is Happening" (DFA)

James Murphy, better known as the one-man dance-rock band LCD Soundsystem, has loaded himself up with broad, juicy aesthetic problems. One problem is how to transfer the magic of one form to another. He admires the slow, additive, build-up-the-vibes process of an extended dance mix or a DJ set, and he wants to replicate it with live instruments in a single song.

Another is how -- or whether -- to be cool at an advanced age. (He's 40.) He has said that this will be his last LCD Soundsystem record, but whereas he used to take an entire song to transmit a hipster's age-consciousness -- "Losing My Edge," his breakthrough from eight years ago -- now he can transmit it in a single phrase. This routine has made him a little bigger than his music, and it's become something he could potentially mine for a long time.

A lot of the words in and of themselves on the anxiety-filled "This Is Happening" -- yowled, crooned or muttered as if he's making them up on the fly -- aren't very good, except to engage you with the music. You wonder how he could share lyrics so half-baked.

But you can't ignore those words, and the more they come to feel like branding, the more irritating they can be. Murphy specializes in fake deep-thoughts -- "complicated people never do what you tell them to" -- or a kind of dopey metalanguage.

This music sounds fantastic, as usual -- clean, tight and separated in the mix -- but songwriting inspiration is in short supply. The songs in general come from a hugely judicious mid-1970s to mid-'80s record collection: Brian Eno for the disembodied vocals; Bowie, Ultravox and the British new-romantic bands for the intellectual romance; Kraftwerk and disco for the beats; post-punk for the atmosphere.

"Drunk Girls," the most rock 'n' roll track on the record, grates in exactly the same way as "North American Scum" did on the last album: It's empty provocation with a wink.

The Fall, "Your Future Our Clutter" (Domino)

Love him or hate him, Mark E. Smith is still a singular frontman. The sole constant in England's inveterate post-punk act the Fall, he barks, mutters, talks and occasionally sings his way through this 29th studio album. He's backed by the same hard-bitten four-piece as on 2008's "Imperial Wax Solvent," including his keyboardist wife, Eleni Poulou. The 50-minute "Your Future Our Clutter" is an exercise in mutation, its nine songs changing form as they proceed. "Bury Pts. 1 + 3" spends its first third willfully muffled, while Smith asserts himself over the tarnished blues of "Hot Cakes" and off-kilter daze of "Chino." Wanda Jackson's often-covered "Funnel of Love" becomes a deadpan oddity. It's another Fall record, then.