Not only is it just a damn great record, but it continues to be massively important to music in 2025. It’s as much an artifact as this living organism of artistry, a bridge to the past and future of indie rock and why so many bands picked up guitars and keyboards in the first place. It's an outsider's declaration that got the world on its feet pronto. And with the band set to headline M3F Fest 2025, now's the perfect time to bring it back into rotation (if it ever left).
Happy 20th, "LCD Soundsystem": May you forever soundtrack sweaty dance parties everywhere.
A frontman for the ages
James Murphy isn't your traditional frontman — heck, he almost became a writer on "Seinfeld." That level of wit and unique perspective is exactly what the indie scene of 2005 needed. Murphy is clearly charismatic and engaging even as he struggles in real-time with the mantle of a true frontman, and you hear it across the LP.It's the slight hesitation that actually extends his sultriness across "Too Much Love." Or, the mix of cool and irritation that informs "Thrills." Even just how evocative and primal Murphy can really be when he fully cuts loose ("On Repeat"). Murphy fights through his anxieties and other tendencies to become this understated but compelling creature, a figure that informs so much of the simple but potent cool that imbues this whole record.
In some key ways, Murphy is the prototype for more modern rockers in the 2000s, a hybrid poet, beast and agent of profound change. Few people do it quite like Murphy, and the world's better for his unique personal arc.
Electro clashings
"LCD Soundsystem" is, for all intents and purposes, an electronic album. It joyously rides the line between rock and electro, and in a way that was still daring and pioneering even in early 2005. But it's also very much not an electronic album — or at least one that doesn't want to be stymied or fully catalogued as such."Movement," for instance, seems to employ the cheapest, hokiest synths, a sound made all the more timid thanks to that giant guitar surge. Same goes for "Give It Up": it's hard to tell if it's a '60s garage banger with electro undercurrents, or some synth-pop song that's clearly gone awry.
That's seemingly on purpose; not only to blend genres in a way that's novel, but the band are grappling with bigger ideas. Like, what music will dominate the future, and are we men becoming machines or vice versa? It's music that carves a unique pocket for itself, and in doing so, struck on the great existentialist debate of the 21st century. Pretty cool, yeah?
A new level of irony
You'd be mostly right that this record is fueled in part by various instances/degrees of irony. But it goes deeper still, and "LCD Soundsystem" is among the first truly post-ironic records of the 2000s.Take, for instance, the undisputed standout in "Daft Punk Is Playing at My House." Are we to believe that Murphy's love of the French duo is meant to be completely ironic, especially considering the band's own tenuous but enthusiastic relationship with electronic music? Or maybe that they're being 100 percent sincere, and Daft Punk represents something bigger than a great show. (Perhaps Daft Punk is a device for Murphy to connect the worlds of DIY punk rock and mainstream dance and show how it's all just one giant party.)
We can never know entirely, and that's a good thing. Because earnestness is a joke, and there's also sincerity in the gag. In short, it's a song and record that believes in everything and nothing and leaves it to us to sort it out. That dynamic informs so much of pop culture today, and this LP defined this kind of deep engagement and textured celebration.
Just dumb enough
The whole "irony angle" is representative of a larger theme across the LP. It's best summed up by one review in which the record was deemed "intellectual without being snotty." That's just a super nice way of saying that Murphy wields his intellect and observation skills less like a hammer and more like a surgeon's knife.You can find that across the album's lyrical content, as when the band explore the arc of cultural fades ("Movement") and gatekeeping and genre-hopping ("Disco Infiltrator"). But the best instance is in "Tribulations," this dark, New Order-esque jam that earned some airplay and even placements on game and TV soundtracks. Murphy and company built something as layered and demanding as it was essential and satisfying, a song that could easily fly in today's landscape that's focused on accessibility versus being contextually challenging.
LCD never forced listeners to choose with "Tribulations," and the song's power hums no matter how surface-level your engagement. That's an anthem, I'd argue, for challenging the right folks and satiating everyone else.
The end of cool
Another standout of the record, "Losing My Edge" was originally released in July 2002. And even at the mostly young-ish age of 32, Murphy was already grappling with both a sense of nostalgia and this pronounced fear that he was losing all his coolness to younger, more savvy DJs.It’s a song that captures this tension and yearning that somehow happens when you're still very much within the "good old days." It's scary how much that has come to define right now: young people see how fast the world moves around them, and they cling to the past as much as they worry about their own relevance. It's this logical fear stretched and pulled into infinity, and the experience happens so suddenly and aggressively now that it's hard to break the cycle.
But while "Losing My Edge" doesn't offer much of a path forward, it does feature that most perfect refrain, "You don't know what you really want." You are, dear listener, unprepared to figure it all out at almost any point, and you will always feel this way. The only solution, it seems, is to just keep on dancing.
Forever fresh and lame
In another rather inspired review at the time, Alternative Press celebrated this record by declaring that it would likely "survive the fleeting tastes of cosmopolitan hipsters."Could it also be that the collective were simply ahead of their times? Sure, that's pretty much the focus of this piece. Is the record also somehow timeless? Also yes; there's a kind retro-futurism throughout the LP that is out of step and still aligned with tentpole sounds/energies. Maybe it's just that time's a flat circle, and what's old is new again eventually? Oh, you betcha.
Really, though, as much as that's true, it's also something else still. Namely, there will always be "cosmopolitan hipsters," and while their clothes, language, preferences, etc. change, they'll perpetually need great vibes, sick rhythms and melodies, a little grit and edge and somebody to tell them what's cool and what's not (and why it matters). Basically, to transcend means nothing really does, and we're stuck with the same goals and problems in different fonts.
The best records, like this one especially, speak to this core desire to be cool even when we know we aren't or won't be for very long.
The way to win or lose
In some ways, "LCD Soundsystem" isn't entirely groundbreaking or universally beloved. In fact, there's a really solid argument that 2007's "Sound of Silver" is when Murphy and the band really hit their collective stride. Their debut, then, is very much happy to be exactly what it is: a snapshot.A snapshot of Murphy's rather specific path from writer/'90s indie rocker to dance-punk warrior. Or, the unique tension and eventual resolution between the worlds and values of electronic and rock music. Heck, so much of this record just works because it almost triumphs while clearly falling just short of some grander revelation.
So, in a way, the album latches onto this theme and celebrates this slightly cynical, mostly optimistic idea that the future may suck, but it's also kind of magical. It's some unseen destination that will take all of our hard work and creativity to reach, and even then we still might not be enough. Individual songs touch on this better than others, but this record gives you the only hope you need: make that thing burning in your skull, and whatever happens, it could either change the whole dang planet or just someone's silly little life.
Want to see if "Daft Punk Is Playing at My House" hits as hard in 2025? Or, if "Losing My Edge" is still the undisputed anthem for early onset middle age? LCD Soundsystem may play those (and much more) as they headline M3F, which is set for March 7 and 8. Get your tickets via the official M3F website.
