LCD Soundsystem‘s new album, American Dream, is out in less than two weeks and James Murphy posted a general band update on Facebook over the weekend where, saying “it’s the best i’ve felt about an LCD LP ever. which could totally spell disaster. anyway, we look forward to playing again soon after this short break in which i just fixed a laundry machine and a water filter, and organized a kitchen.”
Speaking of playing again soon, he also let fans know that if they bought a ticket to the band’s fall tour (including the 10 Brooklyn Steel shows), they get a free CD of American Dream sent to them:
you don’t HAVE to take the CD, but it’s yours if you want it. i’m pretty sure it will arrive at yours on sept 1. and you can take your CD and pretend it’s 1995. (joking aside, it’s a nice looking CD. and YES with the same artwork). you can also, in lieu of the aforementioned CD, pay a surcharge and get the vinyl. i think it’s like $8 to $10 off the vinyl or something. that should also get to you on september 1*
Meanwhile, Murphy has also been making the interview rounds, with features in Vuture and The New York Times. Both, like his long talk with Tom Scharpling on The Best Show, hit on the LCD’s 2011 breakup and “final” blowout at NYC’s Madison Square Garden. From Vulture he says the decision in part was from worrying that the band was becoming too big and the pressures of a fourth LP were big.
I wouldn’t even have had to make a great record; I just needed to make something passable, to not fuck up. All the other bands that had been our competition had fallen down except for Arcade Fire. Everyone had just fallen over and died. So we were just standing here, like, Okay, I guess we’ll become really big now. I didn’t want it.
He also says his decision to end things then may have been a little rash:
We had booked this Madison Square Garden showThe April 2, 2011, “final show” at Madison Square Garden lasted almost four hours. When Murphy announced the band’s return four years later, some fans were less than thrilled: “I think if your band reunites less than 10 years after your advertised last show, you have to refund all the money from it,” tweeted Pitchfork writer Stuart Berman. and then realized the show’s promoters had no faith in us. They were trying to come up with big-name openers for us because they didn’t think we could sell out the place by ourselves. One of the openers they suggested was Big Boi from Outkast. Why on earth would Big Boi open for us? Big Boi was in one of the biggest, most important hip-hop — no, one of the biggest and most important acts of all time. It didn’t make any sense. But behind that idea was the promoters’ belief that we just weren’t going to sell any tickets unless there [was] some extra element. So I got mad on the phone with them about it. I was like, “Well, how about it’s our last fucking show?” And I hung up the phone. Then I was like, I guess that’ll be our last show then.
Murphy also says he learned his lesson in that regard. “For the rest of my life, no matter what happens in this band, we’ll never ‘break up’ again. One day we’ll just stop making music, but no one is going to say a fucking word about it ahead of time.”
Murphy also talks about his restaurant The Four Horsemen, his coffee line and how, to him, NYC is not as special as when he first moved here:
The city doesn’t feel interesting. It’s too expensive. There’s a lot of really normal people here which is fine, but when I moved here [from New Jersey] in the late ‘80s all my friends were like, “You’re fucking crazy.” Nobody thinks you’re crazy for moving here now. Like, zero people. Instead they’re like, “Oh, that’s interesting. Why are you moving?” “Well, I got a job with Schwab.”
Read the whole thing here.