CityLife

MGMT - hip hippies of dancefloor

By Gary Ryan

1 / 1 imagesHIT OF THE SUMMER: MGMT

ANDREW VanWyngarden (try saying that name drunk - or indeed sober) is cheerfully recalling all the 'non-traditional gigs' he's played with his band MGMT.

"Mostly, they would involve strange costumes," he drawls. "But we've played hockey games in the middle of performances, on the dancefloor. And a lot of times, we would just run away in middle of a song and not come back while the music was left playing.

"We used to perform at naked parties. We both dressed up like hippies once and, at that show, we were both on mushrooms, and we had this huge battle with these spray-painted tree branches. We had a little tent onstage once, and sat inside it smoking pot with six people watching us..."

And yet, having produced one of THE indie-pop albums of 2008 - Oracular Spectacular - MGMT (completed by Ben Goldwasser) have made the transition from swivel-eyed provocateurs to bona fide stars with consumate ease.

On their debut single, Time To Pretend, they mock the rock cliché ascent to stardom where they 'make some music, make some money, find some models for wives/Move to Paris, shoot some heroin and **** with the stars', before choking on their own vomit and dying.

Still, now that the pair have taken the festival season and playlists by storm, is there any chance the lyrics might prove delphic?

"We'll see," laughs VanWyngarden. "We both considered moving to Paris but I don't think it's going to happen. I don't have a heroin habit; Ben doesn't do cocaine.

"We DJ-ed a party in Paris where there were models, so hopefully they'll be more of those in the future.

Embraced

"It's weird that we've been embraced by the fashion world because not a lot of thought goes into our style. In France, journalists were asking funny questions like, 'how do you feel about being responsible for the return of tie-dye?' We were like, 'we feel bad, we feel very bad'."

In the US, they provoked outrage of biblical proportions from Christian coalitions after Time To Pretend became single of the week on iTunes.

"I guess Apple didn't really listen to the song carefully before they posted it and the sample they put up had all of the worst parts of the song for a parent to hear," explains VanWyngarden.

"And all these moms were complaining, calling us druggies, not seeing that it's a tongue-in-cheek song."

Similarly, David Letterman was left bemused after they performed the track on his late night talk show while wearing full-length capes. "He didn't even come over afterwards and shake our hands. I think everyone was a little weirded out by it."

Shocking reactions

Still, if there's one thing MGMT love, it's eliciting shocked reactions.

When they formed in 2004, as music students at Wesleyan University, Connecticut, VanWyngarden (singer/ guitar/cheekbones) and partner-in-rhyme Goldwasser (bassist/keyboardist) 'the battleplan was to confuse people and annoy them but also make them really happy. So we were doing this with our short little karaoke-style shows. Apart from that, there were never any long-term goals for the band. By senior year, we were assuming that it was going to be over'.

Instead, they were offered a six-figure, four-album deal in 2006. "We signed with major label (Sony/BMG) because we thought that somehow subversive because it's frowned upon for a young Brooklyn musician to want to be on a major label," says VanWyngarden, resisting the temptation to don a Mr Monopoly hat and add, 'and it's brilliant to be able to roll around on a cash-covered bed like a kid playing in leaves'.

"When we first went for meetings, the label asked 'what's your vision?'. And our first response was to write this sarcastic mission statement."

Fantastically, this included submitting a list of preferred producers that included Barack Obama and, quite reasonably, 'anyone but Sheryl Crow'.

Alas, Oracular Spectacular ended up masterminded by space oddity producer Dave Fridmann, as opposed to the President-elect.

What this means is that instead of getting a collection of tracks each containing the subliminal message 'Hillary Clinton sucks!', MGMT's debut album is crammed full of idiosyncratic retro-futurist pop gems that channel psychedelia, funk (Electric Feel sounds like the Scissor Sisters performing on the moon, while the Soulwax-reswizz of current single Kids has been ripping indie dancefloors up for weeks now), the Flaming Lips... the sound, basically, of a band excitedly committing the kitchen sink to record.

"I think there's a post-apocoplypic feel to the music which is due to events like graduating and then being thrust into the real world and then suddenly we're on a major label and can make an album," considers the hippy-like VanWyngarden, whose dad edits an alternative newspaper in Memphis and whose mum will regularly smoke joints with him.

References

Still, although their references to drugs in interviews that makes you ponder if there's any room left for blood in their bloodstreams, and the saucer-eyed quality to their music, MGMT insist the studio is strictly substance-free. "We don't ever write songs while we're on drugs," maintains VanWyngarden.

"I mean, the atmosphere, the feelings and emotions you can't really understand unless you've done psychedelic drugs, maybe that comes out in the music."

Despite increased stakes, MGMT's mission to bewitch, bewilder and bother remains undimmed. "We want to be careful that they're (Sony/BMG) not going to try and make us into the Scissor Sisters," advises VanWyngarden. "We're always going to want to be able to change and freak people out and be chameleons.

"I guess the ultimate goal is for MGMT to get as big as humanly possible and then, when no one's expecting it, just do the absolute biggest prank that will make a lot of people sad. We want to play stadiums and stuff but watch out, when it gets to a certain point, we're just going to do something insane."

Radiohead were so impressed with them they booked them as support for their gargantuan Cricket Ground date during the summer, while their last headlining date in Manchester saw the Academy 2 accomodate possibly the biggest drum-riser in the city's history on its stage, while the band themselves casually dropped prog-rock wig outs and Radiohead covers in at will to flesh out the set.

All roads lead to another befuddling (Oracular) spectacular then when they return to play to a soldout Academy 1 crowd on Tuesday.

MGMT play Academy 1 on Tuesday, November 11. Amazing Baby support. Call 0161 832 1111 to check for returns.

Published: Sat, 11 October, 2008

Comment on this article

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may m wrote:

a bad heavy metal band?
heavy metal?
mgmt?
heavy metal?

just curious have you ever actually listened to them?
haha heavy metal.

yoomamma yomamma wrote:

mr gary ryan!!! u suck!! ur just jelous because they make better music then u! they like to have fun not do drugs oh AND hes last name is GERMAN!! ok its hard to say my other last name is vanwallenmeyer so what?! i like my last name i like being german racist! oh and just stop making shity articals about people! that make great fun full of life music!! u sir are a JERK!!! i can't believe it thats soo mean to say that i like the lines in the song time to pretend "make some music make some money find some models for wives/move to paris shoot some heroin fuck with the stars" whats wrong with that!!!!!!! i like it if u don't then keep ur mouth shut!

courtney davis wrote:

rob,u need 2 shut up.i no u hate them but thers no need 2 dis them.just shut up and leave your opinion 2 urself.ur just a waste of a perfectly good spot at an MGMT performance that any other MGMT fan wud of happily had

Rob Skilbeck wrote:

They are a bad heavy metal band who have sold their soul to Kraftwerk and come up with two blinding electro tunes by accident. Saw them at Glastonbury and it was like watching Rick Wakeman play King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table....for 45 minutes - the last ten minutes when they play Kids (or mime to it, as they did then) and Time to Pretend barely make up for the twiddly nonsense that has gone before...and I'm bloody sick of the Soulwax remix of Kids as well, heard it 3 times at The Warehouse on Saturday and at the Neon Neon show last night.