Discovering LCD Soundsystem

Hi, welcome to “Beats Per Muse” or BPM. A spontaneous blog relating to music and the human experience, from a music therapist. Here, we dive into things like artists that have had a profound impact on myself or my work, stories of the beauty of music therapy, and the like.

Today, I really needed to talk about the incredible impact of the band LCD Soundsystem on my life.

My fiancé and I moved to Portland, OR from SW Florida in September 2021. He and I were ready for a new journey after I had completed my internship and worked for a little while. We moved out here for a job and that job eventually led me to open NeuroVibes.

When we moved out here, COVID precautions were still very much in effect and we couldn’t meet new people. So, I threw myself HARD into trail running. I have a dedicated playlist for my runs, which was small at this time and spotify kept recommending songs. It repeatedly kept putting on “Daft Punk is Playing at My House,” which at first… meh? This is outside what I normally listen to, it’s got a good beat… okay. Then, the most incredible song came on, “Dance Yrself Clean.” This song took me.

I was diagnosed with ADHD in 2022, which is very funny in hindsight, how little we understand about how ADHD presents in females, what we know now, and how “textbook” my symptoms were throughout my life. At the time, it was a little shattering. How hard it was to finish my music therapy degree while holding a job, struggling through music theory, managing my time appropriately, constantly waiting until the last minute to finish a paper or practice for piano. Always hearing “she’s so smart, but so messy and scattered…” or my professors thinking “she simply doesn’t care.”

But the drop… the drop in LCD Soundsystem’s “Dance Yrself Clean,” the lyrics that lead up… the misunderstood, neurodivergent GOSPEL James Murphy expressed. “Walking up to me expecting words” and “Killing it with close inspection,” the expectation of doing things a certain way and the way people are torn down for NEEDING to do something different, the test of intelligence being the ability to climb a tree when you’re a fish. James Murphy’s words in this song opened up so much self-acceptance and compassion, I am not alone in this feeling and I am allowed to dance myself clean, I am allowed to let things so, and I am allowed to feel how I do. 

This spurred an absolute obsession with LCD Soundsystem, at one point I was talking to my fiance about flying out to Europe to see them on tour. Then, they opened the summer season at Hayden Holmes in May 2024, this was one of the most important concerts of my life.

I am seeing them again August 2025, I have to see them again. I NEVER thought I would want to chase a band and go to every one of their concerts, but LCD Soundsystem is something so different…

Listening Recommendations: Dance Yrself Clean, Someone Great, New York I Love You, All My Friends, I Can Change, Home.

Bonus: 45:33 for a workout track, written specifically for Nike.