As if having LCD Soundsystem heading to Australia to tour for Splendour in the Grass isn’t enough, they’ve hit us with some more big news overnight – and some new music.
Taking to Facebook, frontman James Murphy unveiled two new tracks, titled ‘Call The Police’ and ‘American Dream’, noting that they’d already given Brooklyn fans a preview of the tracks last month.
“We played them both at Brooklyn Steel. They’re new.” he told fans, adding that he mixed the latter himself, while famed producer Dave Sardy handled the former.
Excitingly, Australia was first to hear the new tracks, as they dropped at midnight in every territory across the globe, starting with us (“so, like, australia first, and so on and so forth”). Just as exciting? They’re both appearing on the rumoured next album, and it’s not far off now.
“Seriously almost done with the LP,” Murphy revealed. “1 more vocal and 2 more mixes to go. as eager as folks have been for me to get this done, it’s got nothing on how much i want to be finished myself.”
He added that, while he’s been a shut in for much of its production, the album has been “one of the most enjoyable records to make in my life, if not the most fun ever,” claiming that it’s the “happiest (he’s) ever been making a record”.
While there’s a chance we’ll have the new record in hand by the time they make it to Australia, Murphy wasn’t able to give a firm release date, but we’d expect to be able to at least hear it played live at Splendour, and the small handful of sideshows.
Murphy also took the time to answer some questions he must be sick of hearing by now, which you can read in full below.
Q. but when is the ALBUM coming out!?!! gahh! SERiously!!
A. that’s hard to say in specific, but here’s some info. i insist that there is vinyl on the day it’s released (because… well… because i’m an old person) so it will go like this: finish last mix > get to bob to master > get masters to pressing plant > plant takes X amount of time > records get to distro so that they can go to stores > record released. however long that takes = when the record will be out.
i can control the first part, and i’m furiously trying to get everything to bob before shellac goes on tour and that pushes things further back, and then there’s the jockeying for position in line at pressing plants, and various other things i don’t control nor fully understand, but i’ve been assured by folks i trust that there are a series of fast runners in sweat wicking clothing waiting at the line for the baton to then bolt forward…
Q. is there vinyl of this release?!?
A. no. see above. time makes that hard. also, these are album versions, so they’ll be available on vinyl on the LP. i’m not doing “b-sides” for this, as this is, essentially, a “double A side” release. meaning that there isn’t one song i’m like “oh this is THE song” and another song that i’m like “well, this one can go on the other side” with these. it’s not a 7″, nor a 10″ nor a 12″, in theory or format for me… these are just 2 songs that we wanted to get out to the lovely and patient (and some less patient, but one assumes equally lovely) people who want new music.
there may be “singles” on vinyl of these later, if that seems to make sense and not be dumb. depends on whether there are smart things to put on a b-side. they’re not necessarily things i’d want remixes of, so it’s more about whatever else would go with the songs. there is a LOT of new music–much more than i usually have, so we’re puzzling through all that.
Q. are you guys playing any SHOWS?? near ME??
A. well, that depends on where you live. but our plan is indeed to play shows near where people live. and no, not just festivals. that’s all being planned as well. we loved playing the Brooklyn Steel shows, and we’re just in a funny place, in terms of understanding what size venues/how many nights we should play in various places. we generally prefer medium sized venues over huge ones, but we also loathe overpriced stubhub bullshit, so we’re navigating this as best we can.
honestly, a lot of this is down to me (james, still) being difficult when talking to our very lovely and capable managers and agents w/r/t larger venues… i’m always like “that seems insane!” when a properly big venue is proposed, since we’ve only ever played hollywood bowl, red rocks and MSG, all of which were “special” shows, so it’s just hard to get our heads around the fact that maybe many more people that we assumed want to see us perhaps DO want to see us. it’s been a very nice revelation, but oh dear it’s still hard to make sense of.
what we don’t want: us in some mega-dome (looking like we think we belong in some mega-dome) playing to 1/16th of a full room, while someone says things like “well, we can curtain off the balconies so it doesn’t look so bad,” after telling us “you have to charge $180 a ticket for it to make any sense.”
what we also don’t want: tickets to our shows being sold for $1000 on eBay, and people who like our band standing outside crying because they bought some bogus barcode from some shit-heel scalper.
what we want: full shows that aren’t so big that you feel like you need binoculars to see if pat is actually behind the drums or if it’s louis ck or something.
