LCD Soundsystem shows darker side
CD REVIEW
Here’s the thing about most comebacks: They’re rarely worth it, except to the artist’s bank account.
So skepticism, if not downright cynicism, precedes LCD Soundsystem’s first album since 2010, a feeling compounded by LCD’s announcement that it was playing its “final” concert in 2011.
That’s a lot of baggage to shake off, and the arrival of “American Dream” might not be enough to do the job. The album gets personal, but in a more low-key way than ever before.
This from a band that specialized during its first incarnation in blending brisk singles, bittersweet anthems and more-experimental deep cuts.
“American Dream” doubles down emotionally, with fewer obvious singles and a slower but more moving array of songs that gain cumulative power.
If pre-release singles “Call the Police” and “American Dream” were a bit underwhelming when rated against earlier hits such as “Daft Punk Is Playing at My House” and “Tribulations,” they resonate more deeply when heard in the context of the entire album.
“American Dream” is a breakup album of sorts but not in the traditional sense. This is about breakups with youth, the past, and the heroes and villains that populated it.
It underscores the notion of breaking up as just a step away from letting go — of friends, family, relevance. Sound familiar?
Now 47, James Murphy is an artist who was fretting on the first LCD album that he was “losing my edge.” He has never shied from addressing the notion that the best of him is slipping away as the years roll past.
On the new album, that viewpoint feels a little less ironic and humorous than it once did.
Murphy opens up as a singer. On the opening “Oh, Baby,” he repurposes tracks from the duo Suicide such as “Dream Baby Dream” and “Cheree” into a noirish electro-doo-wop that is eventually swallowed by a cocoon of keyboards.
The nine-minute “How Do You Sleep?” takes the title of John Lennon’s ode to betrayal, and Murphy turns it into a haunted dreamscape, his voice distant and receding against the thunder of tribal drums.
“I remember when we were friends,” he sings. “I remember calling you friend.”
“Tonite” is the album’s catchiest track, a galloping complaint about — what else? — artistic inertia. The singer breaks down the fourth wall between him and the listener and offers a brief glimpse of the smart-aleck Murphy of old.
“I never realized these artists talk so much about time,” he cracks.
The title track, a slowmotion waterfall, cycles through a series of temporary relationships — a futile attempt to stave off mortality.
“In the morning everything’s clearer / When the sunlight exposes your age,” Murphy sings, rueful humor in full effect.
It’s the same old shtick in some ways, but it’s worth noting that Murphy’s struggle is not so much against mortality as it is complacency. The music serves as an antidote: disruptive guitars that speak in spasmodic bursts on “Change Yr. Mind” or wriggle snakelike through “Other Voices,” the interlocking cross rhythms of “I Used To,” and the spastic funk of “Emotional Haircut.”
Although Murphy can sometimes come across as a spoiled upper-middleclass rock star fretting about not being “cool” enough, his affection for his musical guides is real. He peppers the album with nods to Lou Reed, Leonard Cohen and Suicide’s Alan Vega — all of whom died while LCD was away.
The closing “Black Screen” is essentially a 12-minute goodbye to his friend and greatest influence, David Bowie. Murphy sounds as if he’s singing to himself in a darkened room.
He unspools memories and regrets about a relationship ended too soon, the music a long, slow fade to black that echoes a line from earlier in the album: “Life is finite, but … it feels like forever.”