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,” Mr. 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. (Mr. Murphy said he worked on “Blackstar,” the final Bowie album, “a lot more than people realize.”)

But the anecdote, like most of Mr. Murphy’s, had a point, so he soldiered on explaining how Bowie, not long before his death, had convinced Mr. 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,” Mr. 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.’”