James Murphy's breakout s/t debut as LCDSs featured jaw dropping highs ("Daft Punk is Playing at My House," "Disco Infiltrator") and a few ho-hum lows. Sound of Silver offers improved maturity, balance, precision, greater scale - oh, and fun!
Some of the gaps have been ironed out and other peripheral ideas given their due, like the tranced-out sensitivity of "Someone Great" which gently percolates matching doses of loss and hope, the ambitious space rock of "All My Friends," and the chugging, shoutable, dance-rock of "North American Scum" and "Watch the Tapes." "Get Innocuous!," "Time To Get Away," and "Us V Them" sit solidly in the the tweaked epic/tronic dance groove that has so far defined LCDSs industry footprint - though that mark will be bigger and more difficult to predict considering the above advancements. Album closers "Sound of Silver" and "New York, I Love You But You're Bringing Me Down" are respectively a self-conscious, less successful reflection of the album's strengths and a frank acoustic anomaly / homage to a place as densely difficult as it is inspiring.
