On the morning of April 3, 2011, James Murphy rolled over, reached for his phone, saw he had 50 voicemails, and burrowed back under the covers with his dog. After a while, he pulled on a pair of plaid pajama bottoms and took the dog out for a walk. Murphy didn’t have anywhere to be. As he deadpans in* Shut Up and Play the Hits*, the documentary chronicling LCD Soundsystem’s farewell concert on April 2, he was “retired.”

Of course, no one really believed that Murphy had actually retired, at just 41 and coming off one of the most beloved indie bands of his generation. Music is change, so it was assumed that Murphy would launch new outfits and tackle different endeavors. And he did, kind of, bouncing from project to project, restless as the cowbell on “Disco Infiltrator.”

Lucky for us, Murphy turned out to be a shitty quitter. In December 2015, just two months after declaring that they were definitely not reuniting, it was confirmed that LCD Soundsystem would play Coachella 2016. From there, they hit the ground running: signing to Columbia, playing more reunion shows, playing some regular ol’ no-longer-a-reunion shows, playing a five-night run in Brooklyn, playing “SNL,” and, finally, releasing the excellent “double A side” single “Call the Police” / “American Dream.”

While we await the forthcoming album, which Murphy swears is “seriously almost done,” here’s a timeline of Murphy’s whereabouts in between that fateful balloon drop and his decision to get the band back together.

January 2012: Murphy appears in Rick Alverson’s brutal film The Comedy as Ken, the scruffy sidekick of Tim Heidecker’s trust-fund brat Swanson. Accompanied by the equally obnoxious Eric Wareheim and Gregg Turkington (aka Neil Hamburger), Murphy is the very picture of mute ambivalence as he flashes the disaffected-hipster equivalent of the Mona Lisa smile, wherein irony and boredom pool in the great yawning void where the soul used to be. That is to say: He’s pretty good!

July 2012: Murphy announces his plans to open House of Good, his “personal store,” where he’ll sell things like Chinese sneakers, Danish candy, and socks. That admittedly vague list of sweets and footwear is, at least, an improvement upon the business plan he has shared with Pitchfork five months earlier, for “a store that sells stuff.”