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Music

MGMT

MGMT with KUROMA at Sound Academy (11 Polson), Saturday (December 7), 8 pm, all ages, $35-$45. RT, SS, TF.


MGMT was not an easy band to be in three years ago.

The introspective psych-folk of Andrew VanWyngarden and Ben Goldwasser’s second album, Congratulations, asked more of listeners than their celebrated debut, 2007’s Oracular Spectacular.

That album’s trio of feel-good electro-pop hits – Time To Pretend, Kids and Electric Feel – launched the Brooklyn-based duo’s career and inspired legions of neon-headband-wearing fans to emulate their shamanistic hippie pop star aesthetic.

When Congratulations came out, critics and fans alike accused MGMT of insolence and self-sabotage. Kids, their biggest hit, vanished from the set list, and audiences’ disappointment was palpable.

“In 2010 we went through a weird phase of feeling really self-conscious onstage,” singer/guitarist VanWyngarden explains during a tour stop in Charlotte, North Carolina. “But we probably made it worse ourselves than it really was.”

The press honeymoon effectively over, the pair took their psychedelic experimentation in a blistering electronic direction on their self-titled third album (Columbia).

Written in the studio with producer Dave Fridmann (The Flaming Lips, Black Moth Super Rainbow), its densely layered songs are full of feedback-drenched hi-hats, vocal effects and churning noise that nod to the solo work of Martin Rev and Alan Vega from influential proto-punkers Suicide.

MGMT’s sunny pop melodies occasionally shine through the digital din on tracks like Alien Days and Introspection – a cover of a 60s psych-pop obscurity – but others completely dispense with pop structure.

“It’s a tiny bit abrasive, aggressively mixed and a little bit grating sometimes,” VanWyngarden admits. “But what we’re trying to do under that initial messiness and noisiness is to create a whole slew of paths you can take through a song. So you can follow one sound and hear the song completely differently from the last time.”

VanWyngarden’s lyrics were inspired by surrealist poet Philip Lamantia, whose druggy verse conjures a world of erotic mysticism and melancholy. A political undercurrent grapples with disillusionment and apathy about current affairs.

That theme is bluntly articulated on confrontational single Your Life Is A Lie, a reaction to the blue-eyed escapism the band revelled in on songs like Electric Feel.

Nowadays, MGMT make room for both the escapist and the introspective in their set list. Having weathered the awkward sophomore phase, VanWyngarden and Goldwasser are high on a sense of liberation.

“We feel more at ease with the fact that there’s not a certain sound that we’re expected to make,” he says.

“Anything could be MGMT.”

music@nowtoronto.com | @nowtoronto

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