LCD SOUNDSYSTEM

This is Happening

[Capitol]

The cliché is that people drink to forget, and the same is true for dance music, as care-nullifying a zone as ever existed. But James Murphy dances—or creates dance music—to remember. The music he masterminds under the LCD Soundsystem banner is at least as focused on lyrics as beats, and the one-man band’s third album, This Is Happening, goes for the gloriously neurotic. It’s very nearly a concept album about the difficulties inherent in a home life for the touring musician, with constant references to a partner who wants more stability than the transient artist can or will provide. There’s no sense of true home in the music, either; as always with LCD, each track radically differs from the one before. Murphy will bust out the guitars and real drums for some rock singalongs—but even at their most electronic, his tracks are full of deliciously anxious ghosts in the machine.

–Chris Willman