Album Review: LCD Soundsystem Reveal The “American Dream”
For LCD Soundsystem, Every synth, bass, key, and chord is a picture into the American Dream. The group is famous for making sounds appear like visuals. You do not pick up their albums simply because you enjoy their music: you buy it because you want to see their music. In essence, buying American Dream, on September 1, will be like buying a ticket to the cinema.
LCD Soundsystem – tonite
The album starts with “Oh Baby”, which feels like the upwards clinks of a rollercoaster. As you go up, James Murphy’s voice comes through the speaker readying you for the ride of your life. You are about embark on a series of machinated sounds and images that embody the “American Dream”. The keyword of that statement being “machinated”. For a band, that lives and thrives according to every digitized beat and reverb you can fathom into existence, it is not without warrant that American Dream is the title/ essence of their new album. What concept has been constructed more to fill minds than this dream? As the album progresses, tracks like “Other Voices” and “I Used To” feel like disco scenes where brazened youth are dancing away sorrows and synths. Murphy continues his guiding, wintry vocals snowing through lyrics in shaped clarity. Arounf “Change YR Mind”, “How Do You Sleep?”, and “Call The Police” transition into heavier tones, with a more 80’s electronica sound. If the beginning of the album, the American Dream was “fun”, in the middle you have arrived in the country, and the dream is turning dark.
LCD Soundsystem – call the police
Like anything in life, fantasy does not fully represent reality, and a dream can lose its glamor when actually realized. As the album sonically moves, so does its mood. LCD Soundsystem always creates music that latches unto you, and pulls you through scenarios like a storybook. Thus, near the end of the album, they mold genres to the point that they become “genreless”, even nightmarish. By the time you reach “American Dream” and “Black Screen”, the tides have completely turned. The American Dream has gone full Tron, and revealed itself as a neon game, of which cool effects and bright labyrinths do not lessen the fact that you can lose big. Once again, LCD Soundsytem makes its rhythms sour in transducers and analogs that appear like grim hands ready to clutch your dreams into darkness. The turn of sonic events/ vibes is unsurprising for both the band and the concept. LCD Soundsystem knows how to make music that is curiously noir like, a black and white murder mystery, and the American Dream, even if accomplished, always shows itself for being a harder road than imagined. For More Information On LCD Soundsystem Click Here.
LCD Soundsystem – american dream
