LCD Soundsystem honours Bowie on American Dream, a stirring reunion record that should ease fans’ sense of betrayal
With feelings mixed over the band’s comeback after an emotional farewell show in 2011, new album American Dream aims to set things straight with rousing tunes that include a poignant eulogy to the late David Bowie
After all, it is hard not to be sceptical when a band announces new music with a lengthy apology letter. That is precisely what grizzled frontman James Murphy did last year, in response to fans who were vexed by LCD’s reunion following an emotional, highly publicised farewell concert at New York’s Madison Square Garden in 2011.
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“In my naiveté, I hadn’t seen one thing coming: there are people … who feel betrayed by us coming back and playing, who had travelled for or tried to go to the MSG show, and who found it to be an important moment for them, which now to them feels cheapened,” Murphy wrote in a meandering Facebook scrawl.
Adding more sour grapes, Murphy recently admitted to The New York Times that billing it as the band’s final show was a deliberate ploy to sell more tickets. So it is only natural to think that, along with their umpteen festival and solo dates, American Dream is just a flagrant cash grab for the indie-rock veterans, whose past three albums of sprawling dance-floor diatribes captured the mounting hopelessness and reckless abandon of mid-2000s youth.
Thankfully, any dubiety melts away with the burbling opening chords of Oh Baby, a propulsive slice of ’80s synth-laden nostalgia that taps into the familiar feelings of longing and isolation that have become LCD’s staple. American Dream leans into those emotions even further as Murphy, now 47, fervently grapples with his own fleeting youth throughout the album’s 10 tracks (a pleasantly lean effort, given that most songs clock in at five minutes or more).