James Murphy Announces New LCD Soundsystem Album

Following the recent news that LCD Soundsystem would reunite for live dates in 2016, James Murphy hopped on Facebook today to get some things off his chest. “Let’s just start this thing finally with some clarity,” he writes. “I write songs all the time… Early in 2015, I realized I had more of those than I’d ever had in my life. More of them than when I went in to make any LCD record.”

This lead to a perplexing dilemma. “If I record them, what do I do with them? Maybe I shouldn’t record them at all? I considered that, which was in a way the easiest option, but it also seemed like a weird and arbitrary (and sort of cowardly) cop-out. But to record them—well then, suddenly I have, what—a record?”

After consulting with other members of his former band, the group decided to turn those songs into another LCD Soundsystem album. But there’s been a backlash to this announcement online. “In my naiveté,” Murphy continues, “I hadn’t seen one thing coming: there are people who don’t hate us at all, in fact who feel very attached to the band, and have put a lot of themselves into their care of us, who feel betrayed by us coming back and playing. Who had traveled for or tried to go to the MSG show, and who found it to be an important moment for them, which now to them feels cheapened… 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.”

Murphy finishes up by apologizing to those whom he disappointed and affirming his commitment to the band's new work. “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, because it won’t have the help of being the first time. And we have to play better than we’ve ever played, frankly. Every show has to be better than the best show we’ve played before.”

In conclusion, he writes “thank fuck we were never skinny and young. Or at least I wasn’t.” Check out the the full Facebook post below.