Following the announcement that LCD Soundsystem will headline this year’s Coachella festival and a new Christmas song, frontman James Murphy has announced that the band will reunite for a tour as well as record an album in 2016.
In a lengthy, rambling note posted to the band’s website, Murphy explains the reasoning for the reunion, specifically as opposed to starting a new band or project or releasing a solo record under his own name.
Essentially, Murphy claims to have more songs written “than I’d ever had in my life. More of them than when I went in to make any LCD record, or when I recoded tapes upon tapes of terrible things in high school.”
Murphy acknowledges that the band members’ involvement is required to make a new LCD Soundsystem, and discusses the process of getting drummer Pat Mahoney and keyboardist Nancy Whang on board immediately.
He then addresses the issue of fans being betrayed by the reunion, following LCD’s Madison Square Garden date in 2011 which Murphy claimed to be their final show.
“If you cared a lot about our band, and you put a lot of yourself into that moment (or anything about us you chose), and you feel betrayed now, then I completely understand that. It’s your right to define what you love about a band, and it’s your right to decry their actions and words as you see fit, because it’s you, frankly, who have done much of the work to sustain that relationship, not the band… The only thing we can do now is get back into the studio and finish this record, and make it as fucking good as we can possibly make it. It needs to be better than anything we’ve done before, in my mind,” Murphy wrote.
In addition to the record, he announced additional tour dates.
“We’re not just playing Coachella. We’re playing all over. We’re not just having some reunion tour. We’re rehearsing a record (sometime this year-still working on it, actually), so this isn’t a victory lap or anything, which wouldn’t be of much interest to us.”
Regardless whether you feel “betrayed” or not, LCD Soundsystem is back, and, for most of us, this is great news.
Read the full note from James Murphy here.
