| MGMT's ANDREW VANWYNGARDEN issues a vinyl shopping and coffee date invitation... |
| Written by Sarah Mudgway |
| Monday, 28 February 2011 16:10 |
 Last time MGMT visited our shores in 2009, they were riding high on the waves of success that their debut ‘Oracular Spectacular’ produced - an album that, as ANDREW VANWYNGARDEN hints, was never intended to become as huge as it was - "we never really considered ourselves as a serious band and we weren’t ever trying to get signed or become some huge thing." However, the success and mainstream attention gained from singles such as ‘Kids’ and ‘Time To Pretend’ allowed the band to play sold out dates across the globe, including three headlining shows at Auckland’s Powerstation - which you can read our review of HERE. Since then, MGMT have evolved from the duo of VanWyngarden and his co-founding friend Benjamin Goldwasser to a fully-fledged quintet and released their second album ‘Congratulations’. While many critics and fans were quick to point out the differences between 'Oracular Spectacular' and 'Congratulations' - most notably in the lack of catchy electro-pop singles in the same vein as ‘Electric Feel’ - VanWyngarden highlights that for their dedicated fans, it really wasn’t as big of a change as many thought. "I think for the people who see 'Congratulations' as a drastic departure from the first album - which we never really thought of it as - if they go back and listen to songs like ‘Metanoia’, it is hard to hear something like that which we recorded as we were doing our first album and say we’re just an electro band." MGMT will be back in New Zealand mid-March in support of their second album, this time playing both Auckland and Wellington. Coup De Main was lucky enough to speak to singer, lyricist and co-founder Andrew VanWyngarden ahead of the band's upcoming visit, to discuss everything from Facebook, their upcoming third album, and how he really felt about dressing up as a female during their Voodoo Fest performance...  COUP DE MAIN: MGMT are returning to New Zealand in a few weeks, do you have any memories from your previous trip here that stand out above the rest? MGMT - ANDREW VANWYNGARDEN: It was Winter time when we were there and I remember Auckland felt a lot like a combination of Toronto and Glasgow to me for some reason. We went to Piha Beach and that was really awesome. I climbed up on that big piece of rock that was there and when everybody else was up on the rock I was on the beach running around; I get really hyper when I go to the beach as I love the ocean and I made a giant peace sign, it made a pretty good picture. The shows were fun too, we got to meet Chris Knox’s family and they were really sweet. It was a good time. CDM: Since it was Winter, I’m assuming you didn’t go surfing. Do you plan on going this time around since it’ll be just coming into Autumn? ANDREW: Yeah, if the waves are pretty mellow I’ll go. I injured my shoulder a couple of months ago and I haven’t really been surfing since then. I’ll probably surf in Argentina [while touring] and see how it feels. I’m really itching to get back into it, and we’re going to go to Australia before New Zealand so I’ll definitely surf there, probably in Sydney. CDM: When MGMT last played in New Zealand, one thing that pleasantly surprised us was that your songs took on a much more organic shoegaze-y vibe, especially when compared to your studio recordings. Do you feel like with the success of singles such as ‘Kids’, MGMT got pigeonholed as a 'dance-electro-pop' band when perhaps that isn’t who you exactly were? ANDREW: Yeah I think that happened to a degree. I think that it was a mild bother - there were enough people coming to our shows that knew we weren’t just an electro-indie-hipster band, or whatever. I think that by now, especially with our second album ['Congratulations'] that people have realized that we are a band who are always going to be changing our style and sound - it’s just part of who we are. CDM: Speaking of ‘Congratulations’ having a different sound to ‘Oracular Spectacular’ - were you ever concerned that by taking those electro-pop elements out of your music that all the mainstream attention you had gained with your first album would be lost? ANDREW: We obviously weren’t worried about that too much, as we did it. We really weren’t thinking about that at all when we were making the second album, I think that’s really good. That electronic kind of sound was who we were as a band when we first started, and while we’re not trying to distance ourselves or you know, kind of say that’s not part of who we are... if we were being honest with ourselves, we’re not going to go out there and make electro-pop music. I just think it’d be so transparent that we were trying to capitalize on the success of the first album and that’s just not the goal of the band. The goal of the band is to be able to make music that we want to make and have fans that appreciate that - and that’s what we did. So I personally think it really paid off because we played a whole year of sold-out shows and had a great time and I think a lot of the pressure that we felt from being pigeonholed, it disappeared in 2010 and that’s really great. CDM: I guess also the success you had with ‘Oracular Spectacular’ would almost allow you to take more risks with your second and go at it for what you want... ANDREW: Yeah I think so, and even more so because we never really considered ourselves as a serious band. We weren’t ever trying to get signed or become some huge thing so in a way it is kind of like, there is no better way to do it. We had to take this somewhat of a gamble of doing what we want to do artistically, otherwise if you don’t do that in the second album you’re not ever going to be able to do it really. CDM: A lot of your lyrics such as in ‘Someone’s Missing’, emote really great imagery such as the line of "somewhere there’s an honest soul to mirror teeth where neon lures troll..." - do you have any literary or visual artists who inspire your lyrics? ANDREW: A lot of lyrics in 'Someone’s Missing' and a little bit in ‘I Found A Whistle’ were influenced by the book ‘The Diary Of A Drug Fiend’ by Aleister Crowley - just little things that I picked up from that. Also I liked reading some Carl Jung books, like ‘The Archetypes Of The Collective Unconscious’ which is like symbols in dreams and stuff which was really cool. And also ‘Be Here Now’ which is kind of like a 60's New Age hippy-something. Usually when I write lyrics I try to read a lot and listen to a lot of other stuff. Some of my favourite lyricists are like Lou Reed, kind of the classics - Bob Dylan and stuff like that. CDM: In the song ‘Flash Delirium’, you sing the line "stab Your Facebook" - is that directly aimed at the social networking site? ANDREW: Yeah it is. I think when Ben read that lyric he was like "really you’re going to talk about Facebook on the album?" - but I feel like, why not? It is such a huge part of so many people’s lives... it’s a weird thing to me. CDM: What are your thoughts towards the whole social networking craze? ANDREW: I don’t know. I don’t want to sound like an old fogey or elitist or anything, but I think it’s pretty disgusting. I mean, it’s just wasting a lot of people’s time and distracting them from what real life is. It’s just this weird little world which is fuelled by vanity and looking at pictures of yourself. It’s kind of gross to me I guess. CDM: Moving on to your third album - last year it was announced it would be self-titled... is that still true? ANDREW: Yeah. CDM: Have you started working on that yet? ANDREW: Not really, we’ve just [been] talking about it a little bit. We’re going to start getting together and writing demos pretty soon I think. CDM: Do you have any future plans to release any special singles like you did with ‘Metanoia’? ANDREW: That was just a special thing. It’s funny, we recorded the first album and we didn’t have any extra tracks or b-sides or anything. So when the label said that we really needed some for extra content, we went up to a studio and wrote a fourteen-minute prog-song and gave it to the label and were like: "do whatever you want with it..." - which I think is cool.  CDM: On your website you have the option for fans to submit their own art - what was the idea behind that? ANDREW: When we are touring on the road we receive a lot of fan artwork and really cool stuff. People make us clothing and we really appreciate all that stuff. So the idea was just to get people to submit art and so our website was always changing. But I think we still have the description on the website like ‘hey our album leaked’ and [the album’s] been out now for a year almost, so I think that we weren’t as on top of that as we could have been. It’s still a cool idea though! CDM: I did notice that the ‘Ask MGMT’ section hasn’t really been updated for a while... do you have any plans to start that up again? ANDREW: <laughs> Yeah, I think we should. We enjoy connecting with fans and answering questions, so hopefully we will. CDM: Late last year a teaser video for your documentary ‘Camp MGMT’ with French site La Blogotheque was posted online, when will the final version be released? ANDREW: That’s a good question, and it’s a question we asked our managers last time we saw them and we haven’t got an answer back. It seems like it should be coming out soon. I don’t know what happened, it just got dropped off or something. It was fun and we played a couple of our songs, it sounded pretty good. It didn’t sound great or anything, but it looked really cool. CDM: Your music videos are often really abstract and include ‘out of this world’ elements - what do you believe is the key to the human race reaching a higher level of consciousness? ANDREW: Uhhmmm... spend less time on Facebook! <laughs> I don’t know. I think that people would be surprised by how much you can accomplish through concentrated thought, and it sounds so cliché but positive thinking and focused thought-energy. I think that it’s not... it doesn’t have to be some monumental thing. People are a lot closer than they realize. CDM: Quick-fire question time! If you could be a dinosaur which one would you be? ANDREW: I would be a Brontosaurus at this point. CDM: On a scale of one to ten, how much did you enjoy dressing as Daphne from Scooby Doo at Voodoo Fest? ANDREW: I was really hungover that day... I’d say probably a six. CDM: And what’s in store for MGMT this year? ANDREW: We’re out touring until April, then working on the third album, 'MGMT'. CDM: Any final words to your New Zealand fans? ANDREW. We love you, and come to our shows and hang out! We can go record shopping together maybe, get some coffee or something. |
