LCD Soundsystem return with a disappointment, but is this the start of something new?

LCD Soundsystem have returned with their first new music in five years, and honestly, it’s a touch anti-climactic. The song, ‘new body rhumba’ has been released for the new Netflix film White Noise, but it seems whilst they have been performing to “stay in shape” as lead singer James Murphy put it to fans on Facebook, they haven’t really grown as a group since 2017’s comeback album American Dream.

‘new body rhumba’ opens with a warped, driving bass and drum track. Distant voices appear and become central in the mix by the time Murphy begins the first verse at 45 seconds in, with a satisfying synth preluding him. This is a continuing theme, whilst the track is a clearly guitar driven one, the occasional florets of synth bookending each verse are pleasing to those of us that always saw this as the band’s main asset.

The song is definitely gratifying to those well-versed in LCD’s back catalogue, and can prove a welcome mission statement to the band’s work if listeners are new or more casual enjoyers.

However, the song fails to really show how Murphy and the band have grown in their 5-year hiatus. For so long, LCD were one of those bands where nay-sayers can’t simply berate them for every song sounding the same, a la The War On Drugs or Future Islands, but this song, whilst catchy, sounds a bit like a rehash of the same motifs we’ve seen in ‘Daft Punk Is Playing at My House’ or ‘North American Scum.’ It doesn’t have the danceability, meaning, or sheer joy of ‘Get Innocuous!’ or ‘Dance Yrself Clean’, minus a few times where the Moogs were invited to the party, before being thrown out by the bouncer.

I think they’re practically taking 7 mins and 23 secs to try and condense their entire back catalogue into one song, and it doesn’t deliver anything we haven’t seen before. Whilst the song is fun and catchy, it is disappointing to see the apparent lack of growth in the long five-year break.