CityLife

MGMT

MGMT
Apollo
September 26, 2010

Few albums this year have had as many column inches expended on them than MGMT’s Congratulations.

Dubbed by many journalists as career suicide, its non-commerciality  was talked up in an interview with members Ben Goldwasser and Andrew VanWyngarden as containing ‘No hits, no singles’, before they eventually concluded that ‘this album is going to be terrible’.

Considering the anti-hype, you might have thought MGMT had released a concept album of drone about their love of al-Qaeda, rather than merely recorded something that’s a bit different from their debut. But then you see the Ben Shermanators sitting next to me tonight, heckling for Kids – their joyous electro-psychedelic 2008 festival anthem – and realise why the LP might be renamed How To Lose Fans and Alienate People.

Truth is, MGMT have stopped pretending. Starting off as art-situationist pranksters, their biggest hits – such as the razor-sharp funk of Electric Feel and the gorgeous Time To Pretend – were created as pastiches of pop songs. For Congratulations, they opted to dispense with the radio-baiting hooks in favour of  an album full of lovingly-crafted moments, but one you have to work at to reap enjoyment from, like pop Sudoku.

As such, there’s a disparity from fairweather fans between the rapturous reaction to old tracks (the post-Bowie balladeering of Weekend Wars) and the indifference that greets the new material. Unfortunately, the only person rubbing their hands in glee at the likes of esoteric muso wig-out Flash Delirium, Song For Dan Treacy, and the never-ending Siberian Breaks, is the bar manager, who is racking up a fortune at the crowd exodus there.

The lack of atmosphere isn’t entirely MGMT’s fault. Their musicianship is faultless – certainly an improvement on the Oracular Spectacular tour – but the size of the venue swamps them. “People are throwing beer cups at me,” says VanWyngarden. “But that’s cool... that’s, uh, Manchester.”

They lip-sync and dance ironically to a backing track for Kids. They may view it as an act of Producers-style self-sabotage aimed at the haircut indie-set, a kind of Springtime for Hipsters, but it’s actually hugely enjoyable and confirms (probably to their chagrin) that MGMT are more entertaining when they aren’t being sincere.
 

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