ECLECTIC FEEL
We’re shape-shifting musical entity & play around with different styles, says MGMT’s Andrew VanWyngarden ahead of album
Loss Of Life is the duo's first effort 'liberation' from a major label
ANDREW VANWYNGARDEN and Ben Goldwasser go back a long way – more than half their lives in fact.
They met at university in Connecticut, and bonded over music by the likes of Talking Heads, OMD, Brian Eno and Television Personalities.
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They formed a band, as you do.
Initially calling themselves The Management, then abbreviating their name to MGMT, they were described as “a college dorm experiment gone horribly right”.
From the get-go, this genre- defying meeting of musical minds produced, quite literally, spectacular results.
Their 2007 debut album Oracular Spectacular came loaded with synth-driven hits, Time To Pretend, Kids and Electric Feel, and turned the pair into reluctant sensations.
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“We didn’t expect that success or really want it,” muses Goldwasser today. “It felt like an alien intervention.
“And we’ve never been desperate to recreate the hugeness of the first album because we would probably fail if we tried to.”
VanWyngarden says: “After making music together for so long and struggling at times to fit in, we are now comfortable in accepting that we are a shape-shifting musical entity.
“We play around with all sorts of different styles.”
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Both members of MGMT are 41 and first to admit that the intervening years have been a rollercoaster of ups and downs — but they are back with their most sublime album yet.
Loss Of Life is their first studio effort in six years and first since “liberation” from a major label.
Huge US band return with new single four years after last album - and it’s with Grammy winning superstar producer
It is beautifully crafted, reflective in tone, bookended by the two-part title track’s simple yet exquisite melody and retaining just the right amount of trademark weirdness.
Staying true to themselves, MGMT aren’t allowing too much “adult contemporary” into their sound despite their age.
“It’s like seasoning a dish,” laughs Goldwasser. “If you don’t put salt in, you’ll miss it but it’s easy to over-salt your food.”
VanWyngarden likens it to “a path diverging into two in a wood”.
“We’re 40 years old. We can go full adult contemporary or we can desperately try to cling on to some sort of youthful relevancy. We’re going down the middle!”
With VanWyngarden checking in from his home in the New York borough of Queens and Goldwasser from his base in Los Angeles, they continue our video call by talking about their enduring alliance — despite the vast distance that separates their daily lives.
“For us, it’s like asking a couple who have been married for 40 years, ‘What’s your secret?’ ,” says VanWyngarden.
“It’s wild to think that we’ve maintained a friendship and a strong creative partnership for more than half our lives.”
We didn’t expect that success or really want it
Ben Goldwasser
When your first record is so successful, navigating the next album, the next tour, the album after that, is never straightforward as MGMT have found out.
VanWyngarden continues: “There have been all sorts of trials and challenges but we always weather the storm. I think that is due to both of us having faith in the music.
“We believe in what happens when our minds come together.
“And our urge to make music trumps everything,” he decides, before adding, “It’s not that we don’t want to be friends but we do live on opposite coasts.”
Goldwasser sees it like this: “We’ve primarily been making music for ourselves.
“The challenge has been to keep it like that ever since people started paying us attention.”
With a wry smile, he admits: “We have been labelled self- indulgent at certain points in our career. But I don’t see that as a negative!”
If albums No2 (2010’s Congratulations) and No3 (2013’s self-titled) were high on ambition and experimentation, they couldn’t match the phenomenal sales of Oracular Spectacular.
But the title track of the fourth MGMT record, 2018’s Little Dark Age, resulted in a very modern and unexpected resurgence of interest.
Thanks to a viral TikTok trend during Covid, the song soundtracked five million videos about topics such as social injustice, trans rights, anime and the war in Ukraine. It has also racked up nearly 600million Spotify listens.
‘Moment to reflect’
VanWyngarden says: “We’ve always considered ourselves as making pop music, even though it’s offbeat, and believed that we can connect on a large scale.
“So when it happened on TikTok, it was fulfilling for us as artists.”
Goldwasser adds: “I don’t think we consciously have our finger on the pulse.
“It’s more that we just do what we do. If we were to go out there and try writing a TikTok hit, I’m sure it wouldn’t go very well.”
It was during the pandemic that the seeds of Loss Of Life were sown — although VanWyngarden and Goldwasser were in no hurry to deliver a follow-up to Little Dark Age.
“We actually had a moment to stop and reflect, to live our lives and be human beings for a while,” says the latter.
They first hooked up for sessions in 2021 at Tarbox Road Studios, Cassadaga, in upstate New York, HQ of producer Dave Fridmann, (The Flaming Lips, Mercury Rev).
“That’s like our second home,” says VanWyngarden. “It’s where we’ve done almost everything in our career.
“Dave’s a really great guy and he really knows us as people and as musicians — more than anyone else I would say.”
At Tarbox Road, they laid down “a couple of ideas” which eventually became Loss Of Life songs.
But it wasn’t until early 2022 that they got going in earnest, fleshing out demos for two gorgeous, understated tracks, People In The Streets and Nothing To Declare, under the watchful gaze of executive producer and “vibe master” Patrick Wimberly.
Goldwasser says: “Just about every song began on guitar or piano. It was probably a more straightforward approach than on any other record we’ve made.
“Previously, we might start out with a jam or an electronic sequence.”
Lyricist VanWyngarden picks up the thread: “For People In The Streets and Nothing To Declare, I was just sitting in my bedroom working them out on acoustic guitar.
“So they have an origin that’s gentle, quiet and focused on the seeds of the songs.”
The challenge has been to keep it like that ever since people started paying us attention
Ben Goldwasser
This approach allowed the duo to leave sections of the album more stripped back than usual, letting them deliver songs they considered to be “more direct and sincere”.
There’s no denying that Loss Of Life, the title tracks in particular, has a strong emotional pull, summoning the fragility of a world in turmoil but suggesting that love can see us through.
Goldwasser says: “While accepting the bleakness — we are always going to face problems — it’s necessary to find joy in life.
“And that comes from connections between friends and family. That’s what pulls you out of the darkness.”
The album begins with the short overture, Loss Of Life (part 2), carried, says VanWyngarden, by a striking “melody straight out of Ben’s brain”.
Goldwasser smiles, points to his head and says: “Sometimes I get frustrated but that one just appeared and I was the conduit.”
The track bears a spoken word passage, translated from 13th Century Welsh texts known as The Mabinogion, and, for this section, written by legendary poet Taliesin.
The reading is by an English professor from the UK who happens to be the father of a friend of MGMT.
‘Ancient poems’
We hear him say in portentous tones: “I know why there is an echo in a hollow/Why silver gleams, why breath is black, why liver is bloody/Why a cow has horns, why a woman is affectionate.”
VanWyngarden says: “Our friend Parker’s father does recordings of himself reading these ancient poems and this is the second one he sent over.
“I didn’t know this piece of writing before but we felt it was hitting a lot of the same themes.”
The album’s second song Mother Nature, featuring Wilco’s guitar maestro Nels Cline, might surprise MGMT listeners with its nod to Oasis.
I tell the duo that I can just imagine Noel and Liam performing that one — if only the warring brothers would kiss and make up.
By way of explanation, VanWyngarden says: “We just wanted to pull the Oasis herbs out of the cabinet and sprinkle them on little bit.
“We’re not giant fans but our engineer on this record is a mega Oasis fan.
“He spends a lot of time on Reddit Oasis forums and wears a parka similar to Liam’s. Part of our thinking was to tickle him.”
For the first time in MGMT’s career, they’ve recorded a duet with a guest artist, namely Christine And The Queens for Dancing In Babylon.
VanWyngarden says: “That song is about a couple called Catherine and Bobby and it went through a lot of changes.
“I always felt the melody was too saccharine and didn’t match the heartfelt but playful tone of the rest of the songs.
“Then, when Ben was working on a bassline for the chorus, it immediately started evoking Eighties ballads like Time After Time or Total Eclipse Of The Heart.
“We thought, ‘This could be a duet,’ and Christine And The Queens seemed perfect — he’s someone we almost got in the studio with, in the past.
“It happened really quickly. We had the lyrics and melodic structure down so we just sent it over and he did all the tracking and sent it back.”
This brings us to the rocking Bubblegum Dog, complete with an epic guitar solo by touring bandmate James Richardson and one of those typically intriguing MGMT song titles.
One would think but we don’t have any gigs booked
Andrew VanWyngarden
The song began life as an expression scrawled on a white board during brainstorming sessions for previous album Little Dark Age.
VanWyngarden explains all: “Some MGMT fans honed in on it and were like, ‘What is Bubblegum Dog?’ For a small faction, it became legendary so we played around with that mystique and lore.
“The idea had really stuck in our heads. I found myself walking in the woods five years on, still singing it.
“I was taking voice memos and doing guitar solos with my mouth.”
With the chord structure, lyrics and melody in the bag, MGMT’s next challenge was to make the song rock, to “feel really heavy”.
For his part, Goldwasser says: “I don’t remember writing out a guitar solo like that before but I always love hearing them, whether its hair metal or Queen.
“The Troggs (who sang the unforgettable Wild Thing) are a pretty good reference. When we worked with Sonic Boom on Congratulations, he played them a lot in the studio.
“There’s something about that band being simultaneously blockheaded and also very clever.”
Another track of note is Phradie’s Song, which comes with a VanWyngarden family connection. Andrew, whose middle name is Wells, says: “My great-great aunt Phradie Wells was an opera singer in the 1920s.
“I’ve had a clipping about her life for years and I was really intrigued by her story because it’s pretty unusual.
“She was a small-town music teacher in Missouri who became a star soprano for a decade and then went back to being a strange, quiet cat-lady.
“There are photos of her in Italy, looking like Brünnhilde in Ride Of The Valkyries.”
Yet, in a twist that caught me by surprise, the song is not actually about that Phradie.
VanWyngarden reveals: “My daughter is two years old and her name is Phradie too. It’s a song for her!”
Before our three-way call ends, I ask MGMT whether we’ll be seeing them performing their new songs live.
“One would think but we don’t have any gigs booked,” replies VanWyngarden.
“We’re trying a little experiment, which we hope won’t fail miserably, to make more recordings.”
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If the wondrous Loss Of Life is anything to go by, MGMT’s masterplan is our gain.
MGMT
Loss Of Life
★★★★★
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