Perhaps you’ve never heard of LSD, the new pop supergroup comprised of Labrinth, Sia, and Diplo. Most people I know haven’t. I used to ask people about them, but now, when prompted to bring up LSD in conversation, I refrain, because I’m starting to think LSD does not actually exist. The project lives up to its namesake in that the consumer of LSD begins to question their subjectivity. Why would Labrinth, Sia, and Diplo make a whole album together? How can a song be good and bad at the same time? In the first verse of “Thunderclouds,” when Sia commands Labrinth to put the running into run, what does that mean?
Just like in my sophomore year of college, I got into LSD because of “Mountains.” The whole album wasn’t out yet, just that first single, “Mountains.” I had no prior knowledge of the group; they just showed up on Tidal one day. “Cheap Thrills” by Sia was my go-to song the summer of 2016, and Diplo made a lot of the EDM I liked in high school, but Labrinth was new to me. I checked out some of his solo tracks; he was Simon Cowell’s first non-talent show signing, and has an inarguably beautiful voice, but I couldn’t get myself to finish his hit single, “Jealous”— it’s a tedious expression of one of our least tedious emotions. Still, it’s Labrinth you hear first on “Mountains,” his falsetto floating above a reverent electric organ, like cirrus clouds pooling at the top of a… mountain. I’m so sorry.
It’s near-impossible to discern what Labrinth is actually singing in those first few lyrics, which doesn’t matter: it’s a glorious demonstration of the instrument (I looked up the lyrics just now-- apparently he’s saying heck yeah, I breathe you, because of course he is). Sia comes in after, just as incoherently gorgeous, then they bring in the xylophone. I don’t know why I associate the xylophone, above all other instruments, with the joyful and the sublime, but when I hear those little plinking keys, I regress into the childlike thrill-rage of my kindergarten self with a handful of Pixie Sticks. It’s the anticipation of the sugar rush to come that short-circuited my young, impressionable brain, and the xylophone in “Mountains” similarly primes the listener for the euphoria of the chorus. The vocals skip, the organ swells, and then with one single percussive stroke-- a crack of a whip? two hands clapping?-- the music cuts. Labrinth’s voice comes in before the drums, crisp and focused. He has a question, and it’s an event:
So what we gotta lose? What we gotta move?
I move mountains
I can see it through
I can do it too
Like a prophet
The first time I heard this song, I was driving down a large hill, feeling very in love with my wife. We had just reconciled after a week-long rough patch, and as I coasted through a green light, desire welled up: I wanted full-throated singing and shouting into open air, the way butches can get about femmes. It’s easy to read a butch ethics into the “Mountain” chorus: Labrinth sings playfully, earnest and certain, but he keeps restating that he’s capable, as if he’s trying to convince somebody. When I started actively claiming a butch identity, I struggled to articulate to the gender-conforming cis women I dated that I was 1) as capable as their ex-boyfriends and 2) on an entirely different planet than their ex-boyfriends. I wanted to be seen as a cis man’s equal, as well as the most divine expression of masculinity. Put another way: I can do it too, like a prophet.
What happens directly after the celestial chorus of “Mountains” is hard to explain, Once you listen to the post-chorus, or really any other song by LSD, you’ll understand why I opt to believe the group doesn’t actually exist. It’s too difficult to grasp, how a stretch of melody as perfect as the “Mountains” chorus can be punctuated with the orchestral reimagining of elephants tumbling down a hill, or a giant squeegee raking its way down God’s dry windshield, or a robot getting edged. The post-chorus of “Mountains” sounds like an airhorn having a panic attack, three Spanish night clubs stacked on top of each other, plus the ritual dance of members of REI.
This kind of betrayal recurs with almost every LSD song, like with the ebullient, sticky-sweet opening of “Angel In Your Eyes” until Sia sings the words Ima be the see you saw. There’s also “No New Friends,” where Sia la-la-la-la’s through the chorus with an inspired, mischievous, Carly Rae Jepsen-esque cadence, only for Labrinth to flatly shout over it, “NO NEW FRIENDS!” Their songs produce the opposite effect of how taking acid makes me feel: peaceful, connected, quicker to understand. I wonder if the intent was to make music that sounds like an acid trip— if yes, they may have succeeded. When I’ve done hallucinogens in the past, stunning come-ups have been cut violently short by the smallest of disturbances, like seeing a man with a parrot on his shoulder, or getting a text message from my boss. The music I turn to in these moments has historically been by Burial or Four Tet; songs with consistent melodies that evolve subtly over time, guiding me back to the summit of the trip. But the music of LSD, even “Mountains,” is too disjointed to summit anything. It’s an acid trip from the prospective of the trip-sitter: fascinating in moments, but more often, laughably bad.