LCD Soundsystem American Dream

Yes, it was worth it. The “Scary Monsters”-like guitar work in “Other Voices,” the driving post-punk of “Call the Police,” the ascending synths that bring “Change Yr Mind” to a spectacular crescendo—any one of these things was reason enough for James Murphy to have resurrected LCD Soundsystem. But they belong to an album that’s more than a collection of sounds and textures. American Dream is cohesive—a single thought that speaks directly to our violent and frustrating historical moment (“I’m still trying to wake up,” Murphy sings in a vulnerable falsetto during “I Used To”) while delivering enough sonic punch to drown out the chaos.

As with LCD’s previous works, it might take a few years to unpack everything that’s good on American Dream. These 10 songs evoke all the things that made LCD great in the past, from the chilly grandeur of the production (see opener “Oh Baby”) to Murphy’s sardonic, world-weary lyrics (“You can’t be believed, and you can’t believe what you’re told,” he sings in “Other Voices”), while adding some indispensable new phrases to LCD’s peerless musical vocabulary.