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**★★★★☆**

There's something beautifully perverse about LCD Soundsystem's decision to document their supposed farewell with a triple-disc live album recorded at Madison Square Garden. Here was James Murphy, the reluctant dance-punk prophet, turning his band's death rattle into a monument to sweaty, cathartic release – and in the process, creating one of the most emotionally devastating live recordings in recent memory.

The Long Goodbye captures the final show of LCD's original incarnation on April 2nd, 2011, the culmination of a farewell tour that felt less like a victory lap and more like a wake. Murphy, ever the neurotic perfectionist, had announced the band's dissolution a year earlier, claiming he was too old to be jumping around on stage past forty. The decision sent shockwaves through the indie-dance world, where LCD had spent the better part of a decade perfecting their unique brand of melancholic disco-punk that made dancing and crying feel like the same gesture.

What unfolds across these three discs is nothing short of transcendent. The album opens with "Dance Yrself Clean," and immediately you're thrust into that familiar LCD universe where Kraftwerk meets The Velvet Underground in a Brooklyn warehouse at 4am. Murphy's vocals carry an extra weight here, each line delivered with the knowledge that these words won't be sung again. The song's explosive second half hits like a religious experience, Nancy Whang's keyboards cascading over Pat Mahoney's relentless rhythms while Murphy howls about getting older and feeling worse.

The genius of LCD Soundsystem was always their ability to make electronic music feel utterly human, and nowhere is this more apparent than on "All My Friends." Here, stretched out to nearly eight minutes, it becomes an epic meditation on aging and friendship that builds with the inexorable logic of a great Neu! track. Murphy's voice cracks with genuine emotion as he delivers lines about "where are your friends tonight?" to a crowd of 20,000 who are, in that moment, all his friends.

"I Can Change" strips away the studio polish to reveal the song's vulnerable core, while "Daft Punk Is Playing At My House" transforms from cheeky name-drop into genuine celebration of electronic music's power to unite strangers in movement. But it's the deep cuts that truly shine here – "Tribulations" becomes a seven-minute krautrock odyssey, while "Movement" pulses with an urgency that makes you understand why this band had to exist.

The album's emotional peak arrives with "Someone Great," LCD's most perfect song rendered even more devastating in this context. What was already a masterpiece about loss becomes something approaching the sublime, Murphy's deadpan delivery of "I wish that we could talk about it / But there, that's the problem" hitting like a punch to the solar plexus. The crowd's reverent silence speaks volumes about the song's power.

Musically, LCD Soundsystem operated in a space entirely their own, fusing the motorik rhythms of German electronic pioneers with the art-school sensibilities of New York's post-punk underground. They were equally comfortable channeling Giorgio Moroder's disco futurism and David Bowie's Berlin period, often within the same song. Murphy's production aesthetic – all analog warmth and carefully constructed chaos – translates surprisingly well to the live setting, helped by one of the tightest rhythm sections in indie rock.

The Long Goodbye serves as both epilogue and love letter, documenting a band at the absolute peak of their powers choosing to walk away rather than overstay their welcome. Of course, Murphy's retirement proved temporary – LCD returned in 2016 with American Dream – but that knowledge doesn't diminish the power of these performances. If anything, it adds another layer of complexity to songs already drowning in ambivalence about aging, success, and artistic integrity.

This is essential listening for anyone who believes that dance music can be as emotionally complex as any singer-songwriter confessional. LCD Soundsystem's legacy rests on their ability to make you move your body while breaking your heart, and The Long Goodbye captures that paradox in all its sweaty, beautiful glory. It stands as proof that sometimes the best way to say goodbye is to dance until the lights come on and the party finally, inevitably, ends.