The hardest part about playing a naked dorm party? Pre-gig small talk.
“We did a show at which the entire audience was nude,” recalls Ben Goldwasser of Brooklyn frat–funk duo MGMT. “The most difficult bit was setting up. We arrived and there were already a few naked people walking around. So you feel like you have to take off your clothes. And there were like 10 people in the room. Making small-talk was kind of difficult. Once the room had totally filled up with naked people, it got easier.”

If you really want to piss Goldwasser off, ask him how it feels to be one half of a novelty act. Not that he doesn’t see where you’re coming from. By their own admission, him and MGMT partner Andrew Van Wyngarden didn’t take themselves especially seriously when they started jamming together as undergrads at Wesleyan University in Middleton, Connecticut
“Our first gig was a talent show,” says Goldwasser “We were the last people to go on. We decided to play the Ghostbusters’ theme until everyone left. We managed to play it until one person was left. But she wouldn’t go. That was after about an hour and a half. We were looping the bass-line and adding stuff on top. I think that at that point I was ready to crack myself.”
But that isn’t to say MGMT (pronounced like it’s ‘M G M T’ by the way – Goldwasser and VanWyngarden stopped trading as ‘The Management’ when a group of the same name threatened to sue) don’t invest real integrity in what they do. On their debut album, Oracular Spectacular, they come on like the fantasy ’70s supergroup, trading funk grooves, acid guitars and Hall & Oates harmonies.
“We’re like just the biggest Hall & Oates nuts,” gushes Goldwasser. “At the start, it was kind of a jokey thing. But it definitely went beyond guilty pleasure and become a genuine love. We dug pretty deep into their catalogue. At one point it was kind of an obsession for us.”
Having bragged to friends that they’d sell out at the earliest possible opportunity, MGMT didn’t hesitate when Columbia Records came knocking with a record deal in mid 2007 (“everyone else is starting their own labels, we figured it would be cool to do the opposite and get into bed with a major”). Better yet, Columbia gave the duo carte blanche to pick a producer for their record. “We submitted a list of people we’d like to work with. A lot of them weren’t serious. I think we actually put down Barack Obama. But one of the names was Dave Fridman [Flaming Lips]. For us that was as big a joke as Obama. As if he’d want to work with us. But he said yes. It was easy for us to get in touch with him through Columbia. We hit it off from the start. I think he understood where we were coming from pretty much straight away.”
Though feted by bloggers for months now, MGMT had to wait until last Christmas for the first taste of major label stardom when they were booked on The Late Show With David Letterman. There was just one problem: their semi-hit, ‘Time To Pretend’, featured drug references Letterman’s people weren’t entirely comfortable with. The suits wondered – though it wasn’t exactly a request – if they could come up with an alternative.
“Originally they weren’t going to let us sing the words ‘cocaine’ and ‘heroin’,” says Goldwasser. “We had to change the lyrics – instead of saying ‘I’ll Shoot Some Heroin,’ I was going to sing ‘I’ll Shoot Some Aerosmith’. At the last minute they said it was okay. They still wouldn’t let us say ‘fuck’ though. At the end we played the introduction to ‘Light My Fire’, referring to the time The Doors weren’t allowed say ‘higher’ on the Ed Sullivan Show.

Oracular Spectacular gets a live airing at The Academy, Dublin on March 8