The Story Of All My Friends

Dear Reader,

This story may be a tad too long so if your time is better spent watching shitty YouTube Taylor Swift music videos or refreshing CNN to check if the nuke is headed our way, then now would be a good time to stop reading. You may have heard most of this before already.

Or…maybe not.

Today is September 1st, 2017. LCD Soundsystem is releasing their fourth studio album today. So first, let’s just start by saying…that is fucking mind boggling. Their supposedly last show was a 2011 sold out, over-the-top concert at Madison Square Garden which was accompanied by a thoughtful (but kind of undeserving) documentary called Shut Up and Play the Hits. People were surprised and shocked— why would a band, after three successful albums call it quits and break up? Was it all a big gimmick? Was there really going to be no more music? Apparently so.

For the last 5 years there wasn’t much rumbling. They put out a depressing Christmas single awhile back, but I, like so many other fans, came to terms with the fact that that band we had loved and danced our asses off to had given themselves the best funeral ever. So that was that.

Of course until, it wasn’t.

In a long, big, whoopsie, fuck-it apology letter, lead singer/songwriter/OG Hipster/founder of the band James Murphy (who has never come across really eloquent or humble in any interview he’s done) let the world know that LCD would be getting back together. There would be new shows, new music, and yes, a new album. And I, like many others felt cheated out of their grief.

I mean hell, Steven Soderbergh did it right? But this begs the question — what does it mean to retire (or better yet TELL people you’re going to retire) only to come back years later with an apology letter claiming that you’re getting the band back together for a multitude of reasons? A question for another time perhaps.

This article isn’t about that. We should hold the artists we love to a higher standard regardless of what they do, because they make art that inspires us — and that in itself is a remarkable feat that only few people can lay claim too. To make something that can make people move their feet on a dance floor — cry in a theatre — fall in love with a novel — that is something grand.

So now that that is out of the way, here is the story of all my friends.

I had loved the music of LCD Soundsystem before that final show, but I was studying abroad in Barcelona when they played at MSG. I was a bit lost. Despite being in my first real relationship with a boring American girl, I somehow still felt very alone in a city where everyone seemed to be partying their asses off every night of the week. I listened to “All My Friends,” a lot — a 7-minute anthem song that seemed to speak to everyone who felt out of place in their lives. I knew the song was about aging and about feeling left out as the best years of years of your life passed you by. But I didn’t grasp it yet. I was 20. The song wasn’t for me (and probably still isn’t). And the friends I cared about, loved, and missed (mostly women) were halfway around the world back home. But it stuck with me. I played Sound of Silver walking the streets of the old Gothic Quarter, drinking wine in the early evenings with a friend who seemed to absorb the soul, culture, and care-free bliss of Barcelona into the back of her brain and keep it there forever. Still, even as we sat and listened to their songs, I knew I loved the music — I just didn’t know why.

I woke up in New York. Moving between avenues and city streets. Walking past West Village restaurants and Soho boutiques. I was still young when I listened to “New York I Love You But You’re Bringing Me Down” but it struck this bittersweet tone — how you could love a city and give yourself over to it even if it disappointed you most of the time. The next summer, as I worked in the mailroom of a talent agency, I’d listen to “All My Friends” on my way to parties or other events I had no business being at. Some friends of mine had started throwing parties in their village apartment and all of us seemed to go nuts when “Dance Yrself Clean” came on. We danced and moved, jumping up and down joyously through the East Village, as if New York would be ours forever.

And then because of time, we stopped seeing one another. Our friendships dissolved. I no longer knew what I wanted in life. LCD had stopped making music and had broken up and was I really going to stay in New York forever? Was there anything else worth dreaming about besides late nights in Williamsburg and the Lower East Side? My heart was getting broke every other weekend by the same girl and I was fed up with how expensive everything was. I decided I was going to move after college.

So I woke up in Los Angeles. I came out with two other friends — one was already here waiting for us. LCD Soundsystem was long forgotten (though I still listened to “Get Innocuous!” in the mornings and “I Can Change” if I felt down on myself). But a much different life presented itself out here. One that had coffee, women, sunsets, wine, novels, films, music, CD’s, beaches, magic castles, polaroids, politics, sushi, sex, social media, road trips ,rooftops, passports, personals, record players, vinyl, actors, players, porn stars, awards, drugs, premieres, hollywood assistants, parties, radios, hotels, palm trees, apartments, food, love, and of course, a few friends.

I was 22. My friends and I were young and foolish and dreamed of success within the industry. We would be writers, producers, actors — all we needed was the will to want it badly enough. Seriously doesn’t this sound like a bad episode of Entourage already?

But my thoughts always traveled back to “All My Friends.” I would listen to it alone in my room after a long night of drinking or in the mornings, when the hangover was slowly fading away. I remember reading that the song was “a 7-minute summation of the experience of the millennium, the sense of wanting everything all at once, having access to everything all at once, and ultimately not feeling so much freed as paralyzed at the inescapable weight that comes with carrying all that with you.” I felt that in LA — I was so anxious to do and try everything that it was overwhelming. My friends and I treasured our youth like lost boys, excited by the beach and the sand, our books and the films we saw in theaters. It seemed that Los Angeles would keep us young forever. We would never miss the best years of our life because these were the best years of our life. This was, simply put, the experience of the new Millennium and it was up to us to navigate the culture.

And then because of time, we drifted apart. Some friends moved home and stayed there. Others came back. It felt like the band was breaking up again.

I am 26 now. This summer, while I was on a trip with an old friend, I brought a polaroid camera along. I snapped pictures of the people we met on our adventures. This silly hobby began to take form when I bought a massive white board and decided to tape dozens and dozens of polaroids to it. In another words, it became a ridiculously sentimental tribute to all my friends. But it serves as a reminder that these last four years have been very sweet: these photos may hang forever.

And now, like clockwork, LCD Soundsystem is back together. They are releasing new music (“Call The Police” and “American Dream” are both fantastic in their own right). But imagine if a couple you knew were in love for many years, then divorced (out of nowhere) and then 6 years later got back together? It’s still all very strange. But I’m not complaining anymore, I’m ready for this next phase. I’m ready for the rock shows.

My life in Los Angeles is now at its four year mark. Like “All My Friends,” it has been filled with moments of sadness, of drug-fueled escapism and nostalgia for a past time. It has been sobering. It has been beautiful and mature, triumphantly reminiscent of the past and present but still haunted at its edges. The song has made me feel the ages of 20, 30 and 40, sometimes all at once. The isolation and dejection of at once being alone in a place has now been replaced with some sense of hope — a sense of love — a sense that although the party may not last forever, it’s been a pleasure just to have attended it. It is sappy and fulfilled, imperfect and long. Like a record you can listen to all day.

I try to see my friends more now. We are all in different places doing different things but I call them, send them silly pictures and miss them very much. The sadness is still there but the polaroid wall is almost done, too. Everything has changed since New York. Time has weathered our old souls. The moments go unnoticed most of the time — but if we are all together, as the party peaks, I wait for the final crescendo of LCD’s we’re-not-getting-any older-anthem. I wait for the final minute of the song, when I look back on everything in my life. I see the decisions and the deadlines, the hangovers and the mornings, the letters and the sunsets, the romance and the stories. I see the kids coming up from behind and the next 10 years, still trying to get with the plan.

I see the world in its messy furor, the cultures of Los Angeles bleeding into one another behind the backdrop of pop culture, detachment, and disillusionment. The people that don’t impact the culture and the people that do.

I listen and sometimes think I can still experience everything and nothing. Like I’m still reckoning with the past and still searching for something new before submitting myself to the tragic inevitability of time.

And Reader, if you read this all the way through, that probably means that you’re still searching too.

For just one minute, I wonder. What I would give, if I could see all of my friends tonight.

Thanks for reading. Welcome back LCD.

Faithfully Yours,

Matty