4 LCD Soundsystem Songs To Know as Fans Await Fifth Album

A fifth LCD Soundsystem album is on the way, though frontman James Murphy cautioned it’s not yet finished.

The band’s new single “X-ray Eyes” arrived this month and is available on streaming services. Meanwhile, fans can purchase a limited pressing of the 12-inch single at upcoming shows. The as-yet-unnamed album will be the band’s first since American Dream in 2017.

Until then, spend time dancing to these LCD classics.

You got to set them up kid, set them up.

“Dance Yrself Clean” from This Is Happening (2010)

In 2010, Murphy introduced “Dance Yrself Clean” to the NME as a song with a “terrible title.” He struggled with its high vocal register, causing him to lose his voice during the album sessions. It opens LCD Soundsystem’s third album, but it was the last track Murphy finished. Don’t be fooled by the long, quiet three-minute intro. Just after the third minute, a quick drum fill unleashes a razor-sharp synth, pushing the groove and Murphy’s high voice into overdrive. Play it loud, but don’t say you weren’t warned.

“All My Friends” from Sound of Silver (2007)

Using a relentlessly repetitive piano motif, Murphy tries his best to capture the joy he gets from listening to Joy Division. Murphy homed in on the intensity of Joy Division’s “Transmission,” aiming for its elation. “It starts off so gentle and becomes so f–king overwhelming. By the time he’s going, Dance, dance, dance to the radio, your head’s exploding,” he said to Mojo. “All My Friends” builds to a post-punk frenzy, too, and Murphy repeats his own rigid plea: If I could see all my friends tonight. Asked why fans connected to the song, Murphy guessed, “It’s sad-ish, and people are old.”

“Someone Great” from Sound of Silver (2007)

When LCD Soundsystem released Sound of Silver, Murphy was 36. He contemplates aging on “Someone Great” and all the planning, the unfinished songs, the accumulating anxieties that someday vanish. A pulsing synth lifts the track with a warning, an ominous alert to a new problem just waiting around the corner. And it keeps coming till the day it stops. Murphy took the lessons he learned as a DJ. He builds dance-rock anthems with repetition, highlighting his current obsessions. Come for the beats, but stick around for poetries on the human condition.

“Losing My Edge” (12-inch Single, 2002)

Murphy had a problem. He was the “it” DJ but suddenly grew anxious when he heard other DJs playing the same records. The idea of being “cool” and the self-perception of coolness alarmed Murphy. He worried his “newfound coolness” would go away and wrote “Losing My Edge” after becoming horrified by his hipster absurdity. It’s an eight-minute study of cool and turns Killing Joke’s “Change” into gritty DIY techno. It transformed alternative dance music, and Murphy became the artist the DJs were spinning. And it might be the greatest music video you’ll ever see.

Photo by Christopher Polk/Penske Media via Getty Images