LCD Soundsystem - London Sessions

James Murphy is nothing if not honest about what this record is. A fake-live album, he called it, featuring the live lineup, played live, just not in front of people or anything. That self-aware framing is completely on brand for LCD Soundsystem, and completely sells the record short.

Recorded in a single day on June 29, 2010 at The Pool at Miloco Studios in South London, in the week following a triumphant Glastonbury performance, London Sessions was conceived in the spirit of the Peel Sessions, that beloved BBC tradition of capturing bands live and raw in the studio rather than onstage. Murphy mixed the results at DFA's Plantain Studio in New York and had longtime collaborator Bob Weston master them in Chicago, and the care taken in that process is audible throughout. Owners of the double LP have noted that their copy is among the quietest and most dynamically alive pressings in their entire collection.

The nine tracks span the full breadth of LCD Soundsystem's career to that point, and the crucial distinction from the studio versions is that nothing here is replicated with computers. Everything is recreated in real time by Murphy, Nancy Whang, Pat Mahoney, Tyler Pope, and the rest of the live band, tougher and looser and less clinical than their studio counterparts. "Us V Them" opens with bruising force. "All My Friends" remains devastating. "Daft Punk Is Playing at My House," "Get Innocuous," "I Can Change," and "Pow Pow" each reveal something new in the live recreation. The long-lost B-side "Yr City's a Sucker," rarely heard elsewhere, is reason enough alone for devoted fans to seek this out.

An essential document of one of the great live bands of their era, captured at full intensity before the farewell.