Review

LCD Soundsystem, American Dream

(DFA/Columbia) ★★★✩✩

UNDERSTANDABLY, there’s been as much scepticism around the return of LCD Soundsystem as foaming enthusiasm. It’s been seven years since their last album — an aeon in electronic rock music — and in 2011, linchpin James Murphy declared that a Madison Square Garden show would be their final farewell. It sold out in seconds. Then in January 2016, he announced that they were reforming, triggering hurrahs and harrumphing in equal measure.

Given the length of time they’ve been away and the climate in which they’ve returned, you might expect American Dream to be a different, bolder beast — bravura, even — with LCD keen to reassert their relevance and dodge expectation. But it’s an entirely unsurprising set that looks more to music history than ever.

That’s not to say there are no moments of excitement: the darkly insistent How Do You Sleep? conjures thrillingly vast, cavernous spaces; Tonite appropriates Queen via a snapping, EBM strut; and the closing Black Screen is a monstrous churner driven by tribal beats and stuffed with clanging guitars. But the echoes of Joy Division, Echo & The Bunnymen, ESG, Talking Heads and Bowie (Murphy worked on his final LP and claims Bowie convinced him to reform LCD) are undisguised, and general wizardry is lacking. As for the epic title track, brutally direct lyrics aside, it has more in common with Arcade Fire than Murphy might care to admit.

Nobody expects the savagely sardonic, brilliantly minimalist LCD of Losing My Edge — hell, that was 15 years ago — but this is cosy familiarity, rather than fizzing sparks. It’s really not why we welcomed them back.