American Dream
A dark, brooding return marked by massive analog synth builds, motorik rhythms, and a heavy sense of mid-life existential dread.
September 1, 2017 · DFA
A dark, brooding return marked by massive analog synth builds, motorik rhythms, and a heavy sense of mid-life existential dread.
September 1, 2017 · DFA
Cold, heavy synthesizers buzz like fluorescent lights in an empty warehouse, driving these tense, late-night grooves forward. You can feel the sweat and the creeping exhaustion of middle age in the relentless, thudding drum machines. It is a shadowy, anxious homecoming, trading the old party-starting irony for raw, analog dread.
“It’s on the 12-minute closer “Black Screen” that Murphy drops all pretense of cleverness and just speaks from the heart, offering a eulogy to his late hero David Bowie—a man he deems “between a friend and a father,” and someone who “talked to me like I was inside””Read review
“In returning to the project that best suits his sense of adventure, James Murphy has done nothing to tarnish what has gone before. ‘American Dream’ is a darker, more diverse record than its predecessors and a more human one too”Read review
“A relentless, expansive, maddeningly funny set of songs asking how a lifetime of good intentions and hard work can blow up into such a mess”Read review
“The rebirth of LCD Soundsystem is marked by an extraordinary album obsessed with endings: of friendships, of love, of heroes, of a certain type of geeky fandom, and of the American dream itself”Read review
“Too many tracks suffer from a shortfall of melodic potency, and a lack of lateral development, especially in longer pieces such as the 12-minute sci-fi musings of “Black Screen” and the declamatory nine minutes of “How Do You Sleep?””Read review
“Like any other LCD Soundsystem album it will doubtless encourage folk onto their feet, and whilst Murphy may rue a perceived failure to connect, this is where he will unite others”Read review
“If LCD Soundsystem’s American Dream is intended as a nostalgic cash-grab, it’s a piss poor one”Read review
“The spectre of mortality stalks LCD’s comeback album but mainman James Murphy seizes the day in style”Read review
“‘American Dream’ delivers, point by point, on everything you could want from an LCD Soundsystem album”Read review
“It brings back the rush that listening to the band always has, and adds a compelling new dimension to the band’s sound — a mature, realist darkness that they’d only hinted at previously”Read review
“It’s not the path to completing the bourgeois revolution, but it’s a fine, American way to pass time”
“The shimmering score to James Murphy’s brave new world”Read review
How does American Dream sound next to the rest of LCD Soundsystem's catalogue?
The record introduces a distinctly brooding confrontation with mortality and fractured relationships, trading playful irony for a dark, late-night reckoning.
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