LCD Soundsystem

A New Jersey-born punk in a dance-floor world, James Murphy brings rock and disco together with the DFA label and his work with partner Tim Goldsworthy. (The duo is best known as the team behind the Rapture's Echoes.) Murphy's project LCD Soundsystem got attention in 2002, thanks to the butt-shaking single "Losing My Edge," a savagely self-mocking track that sent up hipsters of all ages and stripes. With LCD Soundsystem, Murphy has followed "Edge" with an album that's just as good. The first disc of this two-CD set is new material; the second collects LCD's previous singles. The singles disc simply kicks ass upon impact, thanks to "Edge" and attitude-filled tracks such as "Beat Connection" and "Yeah"; the new-material disc combines punchy dance-floor successors such as "Daft Punk Is Playing at My House" with tracks that either push the extremes of Murphy's dance-rock fusion (the rigid punk of "Movement," the Kraftwerk funk of "Disco Infiltrator") or fall unexpectedly far outside it (the Beatles-y ballad "Never as Tired as When I'm Waking Up"). LCD have managed to be both underground hitmakers and bona fide album artists as easily as Murphy splices guitar noise and machine thump.