For a band who walked on stage in a smoked-out haze wearing casual tee-shirts and jeans, MGMT looked a lot more like fellow university students than adored hipster rock stars. Nevertheless, whatever the pretence, their opening song ‘Flash Delirium’ seemed to have stolen all those feathers, capes, metallic suits and stunts from the past and filtered it through a kaleidoscope which had been thrown up into outer space where satellite signals from the last 40 years’ worth of music could reach it, in order to create 4.34 minutes of bliss.
MGMT has always been an ironic band, and with this came some interesting paradoxes. The most controversial: their satirical but engaging performance of their mass-hit ‘Kids’ roughly half-way through the set. Stepping away from the behind the mic and towards the crowd, Andrew Vanwyngarden finally decided to put those blue eyes to their proper use for the first time during the show, engaging with the crowd, even smiling it seemed at a joke only he, Ben Goldwasser and the rest of the band were in on.
Many fans were already grooving away far too steadily from previous ballads to actually notice that MGMT had indeed lip-synched the entire song. Badly. Although the band never intends to alienate their fans, I believe this was a statement against the song, and what it represented to them.
Many international interviews have recorded MGMT’s contempt for their better-known billboard hit songs like ‘Time to Pretend,’ ‘Kids’ and ‘Electric Feel.’ In 2009 the song ‘Kids’ has reached astronomical heights – the French President Nicolas Sarkozy used it without permission on his campaign trial for presidency. The band sued, and the case was later settled with Sarkozy’s party donating money to the musician’s charities.
Truly their ‘well-known’ songs are only a small façade of the band’s incredible musical range and style. MGMT are not your average mainstream pop artists, nor are these ‘psychedelic chameleons’ easily boxed into any other musical genre. The complexity of their list of inspirations for their sound includes, but is not limited to Bob Dylan, Lou Reed, Flaming Lips, Beach Boys, C.A. Quintet, Television Personalities, Magazine and Love.
As a whole it was an entrancing show with exquisite performances of a cover of The Cleaners’ song ‘Only a Shadow,’ and their own ‘The Handshake’ and ‘Weekend Wars.’ I was surely stuck with their songs playing re-runs in my head a good 48 hours after show.