On a spitting grey evening last week, I went to Rough Trade's new record store in Williamsburg to see what's being called an "interactive gallery exhibition" in honor of LCD Soundsystem. It showcased a small shrine to the band—replete with candles, flowers, and an empty bottle of Jameson—alongside some framed photos, a flat screen TV playing the 2012 documentary Shut Up and Play the Hits on mute, and a glitchy projection of random home-movie style footage of the group. There were also five portable Numark turntables set up, each spinning one of the discs from the box-set chronicle of their 2011 finale, The Long Goodbye: LCD Soundsystem Live at Madison Square Garden. The whole white-walled room felt like a well-intentioned relic—a cheap museum piece that barely hinted at the too-recent memories it was designed to revive. The same could be said of the entire Rough Trade store, which has all of the hallmarks of Tower Records of yore—plenty of space, high retail prices, huge promo posters—but now with an added level of desperate nostalgia. The visit left me a bit dulled—experiencing the halfhearted fossilization of your youth will do that. But something less soul-shattering stuck with me, too.
Stamped onto the wall above the LCD shrine were little hand-written love notes to the band by fans who had previously stopped by the space. Some were weird ("James, I once rubbed your back at a ramen restaurant, it was so creepy and so awesome"), some gushed ("James Murphy is my David Bowie"), and some were all too real ("Thanks for making me realize that it was OK that I hadn't achieved my goals by the age of 25"). More than anything else in the room, those scrawled bits of Sharpie resonated, and they reminded me of the crowd noise that hums underneath much of The Long Goodbye's 187 minutes. That last LCD show was as much of a party as a concert, an extended celebration of goodwill, good taste, and the fact that something so relentlessly sharp and gracious could reach such a rarified place within the culture. It was also really long. Which made sense. LCD Soundsystem were not a greatest hits band. They were band for completists, by completists. This is one reason why The Long Goodbye is such an apt punctuation. It is a largely unedited document of everything this band had to offer: the laughs, the tears, the disco, the rock, the cowbell, the deep cuts. And if you were to listen to this five-disc set front-to-back on a turntable, you'd need to flip or change the record a total of nine times—a very serious commitment in today's stream of endless one-click playlists.
Speaking of vinyl, it is no coincidence that this item is originally seeing life as one of those Record Store Day specials. Along with its superfan collectibility, the box's presentation is spare, monochrome, and elegant, and Murphy tweaked the audio with needles and grooves in mind. "We're totally not making a CD of this or anything, because it's not 1997," he quips on a tiny square download card. And while The Long Goodbye will get a digital release next month, he stresses that "it's really mixed for vinyl." Having heard both the WAV files and LPs, I can report that the overall experience is indeed different. While the computer version retains more clarity, the sound on the records gives into the live-wire atmosphere of the actual show—the low tones in particular are noticeably fatter, gloriously smudging into everything else. Along with Pat Mahoney's tireless drumming, Tyler Pope's bass provides a rubbery rhythmic backbone from which the rest of the band is allowed to explode. Murphy was smart to highlight this controlled chaos in this mix, because it offers a distinct, refreshing contrast to LCD's studio records, which are often marked by deadpan dryness along with a watchmaker's attention to detail. Live, though, Murphy and his crew are more excitable and woolier—it's where the frontman can get out of his own self-conscious mind for few hours and get lost in the beats and emotions around him. This feeling is contagious.
And it's found all across The Long Goodbye. Song of the Century contender "All My Friends" benefits from edging perilously close to breaking apart at the seams, its smile-to-cry ratio more perfect than ever; "Time to Get Away" speeds up and morphs from something slinky into a monolith of funk; "Daft Punk Is Playing at My House" turns into a giddy rush of imagined robots and punk rock synths; Murphy ditches his early stuffed-nose Mark E. Smith affectations as "Movement" reminds you that LCD Soundsystem are a better straight-up punk band than almost any other straight-up punk band; 45:33's "You Can't Hide (Shame on You)", with singer/comedian Reggie Watts on pitch-perfect guest vocals, lives out its disco-ball dreams with a newfound vividness. Watts' brief spotlight reminded me of his production work on the funk-soul theme song for Louie C.K.'s "Louie", a TV show that could easily be subtitled "New York, I Love You But You're Bringing Me Down". C.K. and Murphy are both in their mid-40s, both late bloomers, both hyper real and surreal at once, and in many ways "Louie" has taken on the affably-fucked-white-guy baton Murphy left behind more than any band. And just as "Louie" can hit deep emotional chords within an unlikely milieu of strange sex, stranger doctor's visits, and fart jokes, LCD did the same with dance music, trying to make the beats pump harder because they're always one step closer to the big goodbye. This set highlights that fleeting fleshiness—the paradox of creating something timeless while thousands of people run out of time together.
That headlong rush makes The Long Goodbye more than a cash grab, more than a chintzy white room in a big, overpriced record store with two customers in it. The music is undeniably alive, even though—or perhaps because—the band that made it is all over. Of course, Murphy has always left the door open for an LCD reunion, and the possibility will forever be on the table because the band left at the height of their powers (and because basically every other band has already gotten back together). Talking to Rolling Stone about reunion offers last year, the frontman said, "They get shot down before it ever gets to me." At a time when the nostalgia circuit is on a even-more-depressing downswing, that answer feels right. Even though his recent output—including a stunning David Bowie remix, an elite coffee blend, and a 50,000-watt custom sound system—hasn't tried to match the impact of LCD in any sense, it's managed to stay true to the LCD ethos by remaining singular and impassioned; while you or I may not get the same high from sipping a perfect cup of coffee as we do from listening to "All My Friends" for the thousandth time, it's where James Murphy is at now. And if the band ever steps onstage together again, it'll have to be for a damn good reason. Until then, though, we can still come home to this.
