The joy of this release is the wonderful cover versions of popular songs. Their rendition of The Human League’s ‘Seconds’ is inspired - it’s not an obvious song to cover either. After hearing LCD Soundsystem seamlessly move from ‘home’ into Chic’s ‘I Want Your Love’ then beautifully into the bassline from The Smiths’ ‘Barbarism Begins at Home’, I kind of wished that they had done a Weezer and recorded an album of covers.
Elsewhere Electric Lady Sessions does much the same job as the group’s 2010 London Sessions. Fans will enjoy slightly alternate versions of their well known songs. I love the peculiar inflections James Murphy throws on ‘you wanted a hit’, “we won’t be your ba-Bies anymore” as well as the keyboard freak out which would have been too much on the studio LP, but works well in this context.
There are pros to hearing a live, unfiltered version of the band, their epic performance of ‘call the police’ is particularly good. Despite this, if I had to pick a definitive version of any of these songs, it would most likely be the professionally produced LP versions, which is a drawback. This issue is only relieved when the group divert from their material’s set path, which they cannot reasonably be expected to do on every song. As a result of this, I would only recommend this record to fans already very familiar with the band (like me!)
By: RichardWiggins