Over the past few months, LCD Soundsystem have been pretty active for a band that didn’t seem to have an album on the horizon. The band played a fall Brooklyn residence (minus three shows that were canceled due to the COVID-19 surge), they had an Amazon Prime holiday special, and just last week they were musical guests on Saturday Night Live and performed two very old songs. . . They also have several recently announced residences in Boston, Philadelphia and London.
Today, LCD Soundsystem frontman James Murphy decided to share an update on the band, in which he talks about the reasons for the residency, the SNL show, and why the three canceled New York dates will not be rescheduled. Here is the full text of his Facebook post:
Looks like it’s time for an update. asks management. I mostly consider performing/releasing music as the band’s main way of communicating with the world, but historically we’ve also done more magazine interviews and such. I think it’s been more difficult lately as most of the press material is of necessity some sort of clickbait since far fewer people buy real magazines and newspapers now and I’m not that interested in clickbait/hot takes. however, it would be nice to have a good interview again at some point. this means we can’t 100% control what is being said, which is good if you’re trying to figure out who you really are in the world, which you won’t know much about when it’s just your own voice. and you won’t find out about it, for example, from twitter.
no matter what, we are here.
we played 17 shows in brooklyn at the end of last year and are now doing mini-residences in several places like philadelphia and boston. and then London. You see, historically we tend to take long breaks between tours and records. and then after the break, I start to feel like I want to make an album or we want to play some shows. but then I start thinking, “Oh man. if I’m making an album, we have to rehearse for months to get ready for the tour, and we have to book the tour in advance, and who knows when the record will be ready? it happened to the American Dream. we booked shows thinking I would finish or almost finish recording and then not, and here we are on this full tour and I’m trying to work on a record in gaps that weren’t like that. a lot… there’s this thing with touring where you put so much time, energy and money into “preparation” that you spend forever on tour just to make it worth it… then you need a big break again. then you don’t want to start over. it’s a cycle.
we really wanted to stop living like that, so we talked about just playing a few shows in New York since most of us live here and not making too much of it. for example, we just play because we like it and because we like each other. just be a New York band for a while. and perhaps we will do something similar every year. just be fit if that makes sense. and just make notes along the way. maybe just singles for a while so there’s no ‘album panic’ etc, we don’t know. we REALLY know it was great to play these shows and we look forward to the rest of the shows we play this year. it’s not overwhelming so I can work on new music and we can all be human. maybe we will just play in other places next year, moving to cities where we like to play, where we are expected, etc.
then, a few weeks ago, SNL suddenly asked us to play, which was great for us. many of us really grew up on this show. we didn’t have anything new to promote but they were completely open to us playing whatever we wanted and we could just get a taxi so it was obvious to us that we should do it. it was incredibly fun. who wouldn’t want that?
and finally, this year we will be 20 years old as a performing rock band. I mean, “losing my edge”/”beat connection 12” came out in the summer of 2002, and then we played our first show on November 19th of that year. it was in London, Arthur Baker and Sean McCluskey returning to a New York party at the grand oriental hotel. so we sort of celebrate, albeit in a more subdued way.
and lest we forget, it’s also the 20th anniversary of DFA Records, as the first 12″ records we’ve ever released came out in the spring of 2002. So we’re trying to get some good DFA meetings in a few places. Come to us!
you stand still long enough and everything returns to normal.
dreams never end.
Best
James
well, ps. I see people asking when we are going to “reschedule” the three canceled shows in Brooklyn. in fact, we are not “re-scheduling” these gigs. here are some reasons why:
we just gave everyone their money back because I hate the idea of holding people’s money for some abstract “future” show. (I have friends who paid for tickets to shows that were canceled in mid 2020 who are still waiting for the rescheduled show and while I am 100% aware that this group may not have the resources to just refund everyone after how they spent a fortune making the show together is not something I felt comfortable with.)
at the moment you need to book a place like brooklyn steel almost a year in advance, so there is no way to take advantage of some 3-day run (and if we reschedule, what about people who had tickets but couldn’t come) in those days? should they just lose their money because they can’t do it? what if we choose another seat that the ticket holder hates. it’s a minefield!
we’re giving everyone who missed shows a first dime at our next shows in New York, so if you like it’s basically a self-imposed “transfer” that lets people decide if they want to move on, or maybe they got bored. of us and want to go see someone else instead.
so that’s it. we will play again. and it won’t happen in 5 years, so if you had a ticket for a show that got cancelled, you’ll be first in line for those upcoming shows.