CMU Approved

Approved: LCD Reunionsystem

By Andy Malt | Published on Wednesday 6 January 2016

CMU has a general policy that all band reunions should be considered bad. Because they all are. Without exception. Name a good band reunion. You can’t. Because there aren’t any. But I thought it would be nice to start 2016 on a more positive and less typically cynical note. And so here we are writing about a reunion in the bloody Approved column. Though technically we are approving the method by which said reunion was decided upon.

“I write songs all the time”, wrote Murphy on the band’s website. “Only a tiny fraction of these ever become songs; get recorded, feel like something that should be shared”.

Realising he had a lot of songs that could be recorded, he called upon former LCD collaborators Pat Mahoney and Nancy Whang for help. “I asked Pat and Nancy to come over to my apartment for coffee and told them: ‘I’m going to record some music. Should I make up a band name, or make a ‘James Murphy’ record, or should it be LCD?’ We all thought a good amount about it”.

A number of positions were reached, though ultimately they decided to go with the LCD name, not least because James Murphy performing songs from a new solo record live with members of his former band would look “egomaniacal to the point of sociopathic”. Though it should be noted that, after thinking about it a good amount, option five on the trio’s proposal list was “make music and, like, hide it somewhere”, which would generally be my preference for any band considering a reunion. Though on this one occasion we’ll approve the not hiding option.

Anyway, having been so thoroughly positive throughout here, let’s end on a downer. Here’s the first new track from LCD Soundsystem, released on 24 Dec, ‘Christmas Will Break Your Heart’: