I was there. I was there on May 29th, 2010, when LCD Soundsystem played their last show in Portland, at the Roseland. I was exhausted and the drunks at the barricade were seriously obnoxious, but I knew it would be my very last chance to see James Murphy’s beloved dance-punk act, who had announced that their third record, This Is Happening, would be their last. Less than a year later, they closed the book forever on the band who made it cool to treat dance music like therapy, and to turn therapy into dance music.
But just a few years later in 2016, inspired by conversations with (seriously) David Bowie about what to do about the urge to renege on his band breakup, Murphy and his superhuman band of dance-punk deities rose from the dead. Somehow, LCD Soundsystem had returned—and stayed.
LCD Soundsystem have been back together for over a decade. They’ve toured semi-relentlessly, playing multiple shows in Bend, in Seattle, and at Remlinger Farms in Carnation, Washington. Which forces us to ask: what are we, chopped liver? Why should a Portlander need to trek hours away just to dance yrself clean?
This week, on August 8 and 9, they’ll finally be throwing us a mondo bone with back-to-back nights at Edgefield Amphitheater, their version of a mea culpa for their absence. (Saturday’s show is sold out, so you’ll have to go with resale if you’re set on that night.) And in honor of their return to the Portland Metro Area, we’re here to take a look back at the band’s progress by looking at some of the very best tracks they’ve released since the last time they darkened our doorstep.
“Christmas Will Break Your Heart” — Single, 2015
It’s so fitting that the first new LCD Soundsystem song in five years was a Christmas present. Perhaps more fitting is that, true to its title, it’s a humongous bummer. Sounding like at times like the answer to the creative writing prompt “Christmas I Love You But You’re Sleighing Me Down,” this track had just enough bombast to show you they still had the spark of yore, but enough melancholy to hammer home the fact that James Murphy is still a mess. Aging, defeat, awkward sex, the fallibility of memory: no misery is too good for him to evoke on the path towards a shockingly hopeful ending. He sings of a lover who may not want him anymore, may have just moved on, but he soldiers on: “Still, I am coming home to you.” It’s as though he’s saying, “I know I may have fucked things up with us, but please, can’t we just try again?”
“How Do You Sleep?” — American Dream, 2017
Many songs from American Dream are in contention for the best song to represent LCD’s return, but the nine-minute “How Do You Sleep?” is our key to American Dream because it feels so much like a departure from the kind of angst LCD Soundsystem embodied before. It takes forever to really get going, devoting a substantial amount of the runtime to atmosphere-building instead. Murphy’s voice is cold, distant, but still he shouts. When the climax comes, his repetition feels like the ultimate admission of defeat: “ONE! STEP FORWARD! AND SIX STEPS BACK!” he hollers, sounding just a little more frantic every time. So many songs on American Dream embody the LCD spirit, but “How Do You Sleep?” dares to challenge it to evolve.
“Pulse (v.1)” — American Dream B-side, 2017
Now that is classic LCD. Released as a B-side for American Dream, “Pulse (v.1)” isn’t the strongest song on this list, but it reinvigorated the power they harnessed on their Nike-sponsored running mix, 45:33. “Pulse” picks a mood and sticks to it for nearly 14 minutes straight, changing and shifting along the way but still abiding by a strong central groove. We get why it didn’t make the album cut, but “Pulse” feels like the band’s way of assuring us that they still have plenty of gas in the tank.
“New Body Rhumba” — White Noise soundtrack, 2022
You could never accuse LCD of being prolific or quick working. Five years passed between American Dream and “New Body Rhumba,” a song the band wrote for Noah Baumbach’s adaptation of Dom DeLillo’s White Noise. Yes, you’re right: “The first new LCD Soundsystem song in five years, and it’s for a Baumbach movie” feels like a punchline. Somehow, though, it really works, especially in execution: in film context, it’s the one-and-only song playing over the credits, which is just a single long sequence of the entire cast dancing their asses off in an A&P Supermarket. Themes of consumerism abound (“200 miles of turnpike! 3000 miles of goods! Necco Mini Nilla Wafers!”), but so do LCD 2.0’s focus on rebirth and metamorphosis. When he sings “I need a new body,” it doesn’t feel out of nowhere—it feels like therapy is still in session.
“X-Ray Eyes” — Alleged LP5 track, 2024
You’ve got to hand it to LCD Soundsystem: they could have easily returned to the well and put out something similar to American Dream, a great comeback that stripped away much of the sheen of their heyday albums. “X-Ray Eyes” takes it a step further, paring things down to some simple, repetitive lyrics (until the last third, that is), and maybe the most straightforward beat the band have committed to tape since their self-titled debut nearly 25 years ago. We say this is an “alleged” LP5 track because the band designated it as part of their next album, but after years of teasing, we’ll believe it when we hear it. We just hope it sounds this fresh.
