The has been churning out funky, disco-loving, punk-raised dance music for more than a decade. It makes sense that it’s a DFA project created by a longtime friend of the label head and former LCD Soundsystem frontman, James Murphy. It makes sense, too, that John MacLean would collaborate with LCD Soundsystem’s Nancy Whang from time to time. And she’s fully in the mix this time around, for “In A Dream.” The pair told the New York Times that this album was the most collaborative yet, with Whang and MacLean pulling equal creative weight along with Holy Ghost!’s Nick Millhiser.
Maybe that’s why “In A Dream” sounds more dense and athletic than the previous studio albums. All three are notably passionate about dance music, with a deep respect for the history of it and an intense attention to detail that leads them to treat the making of fun music as a very serious art form.
When dance music gets that kind of treatment, you get something like “In A Dream,” which is the shimmering and thumping soundtrack to a night out that Giorgio Moroder would enjoy (or Daft Punk, if you need a more modern reference). “A Place Like Space” opens the record with the epic overture of a futuristic rock opera. “I’ve Waited So Long” is the kind of propulsive and flashy dance song that you lose yourself to, even on a crowded dance floor. The deep, buzzy pulse and sparse, crisp drum beat on “Running Back To You” invites you to settle in to that simple groove before it brings in the simple melody you’ll be mindlessly humming later. That song is so ’70s you can feel the shag carpet, but the rest of the record isn’t so easily pinned to the era of disco.
Itap lush and varied, if not a little heavy for a lingering sense of melancholy and purpose. “A Simple Design,” the next to last track, brings all of those qualities together perfectly. And if “A Simple Design” clinches a victory for this record, then “The Sun Will Never Set On Our Love” is a victory lap. It might even be more beautiful. It takes a while to build into much more a gentle, horn-lead and string-backed (electronically, of course). That eventually drops off to make room for much more artificial sounding horns, coming in bursts that play back and forth with flights of bleeping synths.
What really stands out about “In A Dream,” even above the record’s ambition, is Whang. With her vocals owning most of these songs, it’s most apparent that she’s well-suited to be (or at least seem to be) at the center. She and MacLean both sing in flat tones throughout “In A Dream,” but through her metallic sheen, Whang can still be dynamic. “In A Dream,” as a result, feels like an unveiling of a new dance hall queen.
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Ashley Dean is an editor and designer for YourHub at the Denver Post and a regular contributor to Reverb.
