On April 2nd 2011, LCD Soundsystem played its final show at Madison Square Garden. LCD frontman James Murphy had made the conscious decision to disband one of the most celebrated and influential bands of its generation at the peak of its popularity...
April 5 
LCD Soundsystem, the dance-punk band led by James Murphy, played its final show on Saturday night at Madison Square Garden. The Garden is a huge venue for a scruffy indie act like LCD Soundsystem, a setting worthy of an event, and Murphy and company delivered one: first, a pre-concert ticket controversy and, on Saturday, a show that stretched more than three hours, complete with special guests (three members of Arcade Fire, joining in on backing vocals) and a set list designed for the cognoscenti, including 45:33, a song that, in its recorded version, clocks in at the exact length of its title.
In the rock press, the band's farewell is headline news. Pitchfork marked the occasion by producing an annotated catalogue raisonné, with essays on all 46 studio recordings released in LCD Soundsystem's eight-year-long run. Esquire published an oral history under the heady title "How James Murphy Changed Music." The Onion's A.V. Club, the paper's serious (i.e., not satirical) arts-and-culture supplement, offered an "Open Letter to LCD Soundsystem's James Murphy" from critic Steven Hyden—a deranged fanboy's cri de coeur:
In case you're wondering—I know you're not, but humor me here—I won't be attending the big three-hour LCD Soundsystem send-off concert Saturday at New York's Madison Square Garden. I'm not saying this to make you feel guilty that I didn't get in; unlike seemingly every other one of your fans, I didn't even try to get tickets. Nothing is fucked here, James. I'm fine missing it. It's not like you're dying or something. … C'mon, you know we always loved LCD Soundsystem. You gave us no other choice but to love LCD, because you constructed the band in such a way as to make it impervious to criticism. … You made classic albums; a lot of people seem to think Sound Of Silver was your first masterpiece, but I loved the self-titled debut from 2005, too. … James, you're on the precipice of perhaps LCD Soundsystem's biggest triumph yet, and it's going to be the last. Once again, you've made yourself invincible.
Something is fucked here, James. The lamentations for LCD Soundsystem make little sense, since it's unclear that there's anything to lament. Strictly speaking, a band called LCD Soundsystem never existed. It wasn't a group; it was a pseudonym: Murphy wrote, produced, recorded, and sang every note of every LCD song. Eventually, Murphy whipped a shifting cast of musicians into one of indie's most vigorous and danceable live acts, but there was never any question that this was a solo artist with a backing band. "I don't have to sit there and pretend it's a democracy and really be trying to control everything," Murphy told Tom Breihan of the Village Voice in 2007. "I don't have to do any of that. It's all out on the table: this is how it's going to work, and I don't have to subtly browbeat anyone to get them to do what I want them to do."
February 23 
LCD Soundsystem sold out four nights at Manhattan's Terminal 5 in less than an hour this morning. The concerts were added following a fiasco in which scalpers bought a majority of the tickets for the band's career-finale performance at Madison Square Garden on April 2nd. The band took several measures to make sure fans had a fair shot at scoring tickets this time around, including doing away with paper tickets altogether.
February 8 
LCD Soundsystem is planning their last show ever and we are sure sad to see them go. Here is what they had to say about their final show...
Good people of earth:
LCD Soundsystem are playing Madison Square Garden on April 2nd, and it will be our last show ever. We are retiring from the game. Gettin’ out. Movin’ on... But for just one more night, we will be playing with friends and family for nearly 3 hours–playing stuff we’ve never played before and going out with a bang, and we’d like you to be there.
if you would, we’d love it if people all came in white, or black, or black and white, and come ready to have fun, please. AND come early, as the festivities will be opened by our favorites, liquid liquid. yes: liquid liquid.
If it’s a funeral, let’s have the best funeral ever!!!
Though this show at Madison Square Gardens will mark the end of LCD Soundsystem as a live act, it does not mean that James Murphy will stop releasing music under that name. In various interviews over the course of last year, Murphy claimed he would still put out singles and other tracks as LCD Soundsystem.
