Pulp and LCD Soundsystem have teamed up for a version of Heaven 17’s ‘(We Don’t Need This) Fascist Groove Thang’ – watch below.
As announced back in March, the two bands played a pair of co-headline shows at the Hollywood Bowl on Thursday and Friday (September 25 and 26), and at the second of them, they joined forces to play the pointedly political 1981 synthpop classic.
James Murphy and co. have played the song before, for the 2019 live in-studio release ‘Electric Lady Sessions’, but it is the first time that the track has appeared on one of their live setlists.
Watch footage of the performance, which saw Jarvis Cocker and Nancy Whang share lead vocals, here:
Whang made the same lyrical switch to the song that LCD Soundsystem did with their version of the song recorded in 2018, singing: “The orange one is president / Fascist god in motion”. On the Heaven 17 original, Glenn Gregory sang, “Reagan’s president elect / Fascist god in motion”.
LCD Soundsystem played:
‘Tribulations’
‘Tonite’
‘On Repeat’
‘Oh Baby’
‘Yeah’
‘Someone Great’
‘Losing My Edge’
‘Dance Yrself Clean’
‘(We Don’t Need This) Fascist Groove Thang’ (with Pulp)
‘New York, I Love You But You’re Bringing Me Down’
‘All My Friends’
This is not the first time these two bands have been linked together. Back in 2013, Murphy produced Pulp’s reunion single ‘After You’. The track was first demoed during the sessions for 2001 Pulp LP ‘We Love Life’, but was freshly recorded in November 2012 and finished off with Murphy in December of that year. It went on to be Pulp’s first new single in eleven years.
The band released their new album ‘More’ in June, their first new full-length record in 24 years. NME spoke to Cocker about the process of making it, and the impact that growing older had on the creative process.
In a four-star review of ‘More’, NME wrote: “Drenched in synths and strings and aided by producer James Ford’s knack for making the music feel alive and omnipresent, ‘More’ is everything you’d want a Pulp album to be, made richer from some lived experience.”
The album has been nominated for this year’s Mercury Prize, alongside the likes of CMAT, Fontaines D.C., PinkPantheress and Wolf Alice.
The band will also release a deluxe reissue of their classic 1995 album ‘Different Class’ in October, complete with their full Glastonbury 1995 performance.
As for LCD Soundsystem, their release of ‘X-Ray Eyes’ in October last year is thought to be the first taste of their next album, which was initially reported to be set for release at some point in 2025. Murphy later shared an update on the upcoming record, saying: “Don’t ask me when that is, because we are still working on it. But it feels very good to be putting out new music.”
