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NYT Syndicate
The musician James Murphy is the kind of guy who can ” and will ” tell an intimate David Bowie story, while also making it clear that he knows it's a bit embarrassing, or at least uncomfortable, to be the kind of guy who might drop a two-ton name like that out of nowhere. He can tell what you're thinking and he's thinking it, too.
"I met with ... David," Murphy said recently in a peak-gentrification Williamsburg hotel loft in Brooklyn, deploying a self-mocking tone that also conveyed reverence."It sounds absurd ” there's no way you can say it: Mr Bowie," he riffed, with more incredulity at his own standing. (Murphy said he worked on 'Blackstar', the final Bowie album,"a lot more than people realise.)
But the anecdote, like most of Murphy's, had a point, so he soldiered on explaining how Bowie, not long before his death, had convinced Murphy that it was acceptable to bring back his cult disco-punk band LCD Soundsystem just five years after making a big deal of its demise.
"I was talking to him about it and I was like, this is a really weird thing," Murphy said, slipping into a half-impression as he recalled Bowie's reply:"'Does it make you uncomfortable?' And I was like, yeah. He said: 'Good. If you're not uncomfortable, then you're not doing anything.'"
Murphy had mostly made up his mind already: Despite what he called the"perfect swan dive" of a dramatic, blowout farewell that he designed for LCD Soundsystem in 2011 ” which included a sold-out final show at Madison Square Garden, a subsequent documentary (Shut Up and Play the Hits) and a live album ('The Long Goodbye') ” he was making new music and involving the same cadre of friends and collaborators. So of course it would be called LCD Soundsystem, which had always been synonymous with Murphy's piercing frontman persona and exacting, slow-build dance-rock compositions.
Beginning early last year, the band has come back bigger and more omnipresent than it ever was, headlining festivals like Coachella, performing on 'Saturday Night Live and releasing 'American Dream', its fourth album and first for Columbia Records.
The challenge now for Murphy and his suddenly-more-famous band ” which includes the core members Pat Mahoney on drums and Nancy Whang on keyboards, along with the guitarist Al Doyle ” is to transcend the insta-nostalgia of a reunion tour while contending with those sceptical fans who felt betrayed by the Jay-Z-like retirement fakeout.
"There was a moment when I was regretting it," Murphy said of the temporary goodbye."But then I was like, no, because now if we're going to play again, we really have to justify it. That's a new, exciting problem and far more interesting to me. We've got to do something good enough."
The rebirth also allowed Murphy, who did not approach rock-star status until his late 30s, to"shift eras" ” here, again, he invoked Bowie, citing his chronic reinventing ” in an organic way because his station in life had changed."I'm 47, and I've got a 2-year-old," Murphy said.
While LCD Soundsystem had always positioned itself as"slightly superior and slightly scary ” a snarky record-jerk band that could outsnark even the most curmudgeonly, hyper-knowledgeable record dork," he said,"that is not what we are now."
The broader universe had changed in the meantime, as well. Although 'American Dream' is"not overtly political," Mahoney, the drummer, said,"I think it contains some of the turmoil that the world is experiencing right now." Whang added of Murphy's songwriting:"It's much darker and much heavier," with"a bit more gravity."
Murphy said he had"quickly realised that a wry wit from a distance would, at this point, be self-parody and a crutch," adding,"To try to sing more and to let go, to a certain degree, of my ironic distance was a terrifying thing and the best use of 'you should be uncomfortable' that I could make."
Born out of Murphy's DFA Records collective in 2002 with the era-defining single-slash-monologue Losing My Edge ”"I'm losing my edge to the internet seekers who can tell me every member of every good group from 1962 to 1978" ” LCD Soundsystem came to represent a certain elite, New York slice of the hipster aughts."A band about bands," as Murphy called it, the group was purposefully pretentious, but also dedicated to bodily movement.
Across a trilogy of albums, concluding with This Is Happening in 2010, LCD Soundsystem expanded its palette from brash and bratty to something approaching epic and sincere.
At first,"LCD was a project," while DFA was everything, Murphy explained. But by 2010, LCD Soundsystem had cemented itself as a reliable critical favourite, and there was a growing sense among the band and its business partners that the next album was going to be huge."As things mature ” whether they be real estate, rock 'n' roll, politics, festivals, radio ” there's an efficiency that develops and with it, very often, comes some soul-crushing truths," Murphy said.
"If you keep doing it, you get bigger even if the records get worse," he continued, invoking U2, the Cure, Talking Heads, REM and the Pixies."It was our turn," he said."And something about that turned my stomach."
