MGMT Live at the Academy

Speaking to journalists recently, MGMT’s Ben Goldwasser noted many people are ”really, really angry” the Brooklyn psychedelic duo have turned their back on air- play friendly pop with their strikingly eccentric new album Congratulations.
It might be more accurate to say that MGMT’s fan-base is deeply baffled as to why the musicians who wrote ‘Kids’ – surely one of the finest singles of the past decade – should wish to inflict upon our eardrums a 12-minute slab of droopy, drony noodling such as ‘Siberian Breaks’, recreated in all its obtuse glory at The Academy.
To describe this performance as surreal experience is a bit like stating that Shane MacGowan enjoys the odd drink. Cutting and splicing tracks from Congratulations and hits from the debut Oracular Spectacular, Goldwasser and singer Andrew VanWyngarden manage to induce an out-of-body experience among a fair wedge of those in attendance – at moments it really does feel as if you’re simultaneously witnessing two different shows at once. One minute they’re romping their way through ‘Time To Pretend’, a speedball of pop perfection that goes straight into your blood stream, the next they’re channelling 80s indie-schmindie acts such as The Field Mice on the jerky, half-sketched likes of ‘Brian Eno’.
Only a churl would condemn MGMT, who worked on the new LP with Spacemen 3’s Pete Kember, for following their muse. And yet, it’s undeniable fact that the mainstream audience they won with Oracular Spectacular simply isn’t ready to hear VanWyngarden and Goldwasser deliver edited highlights from the A-Z of indie miserablism. As a final insult, they don’t even bother performing ‘Kids’ live, instead crooning along to a backing-track while – seriously – their backing players fling soft toys into the pit.
Listen carefully and you hear the air slow-seeping out of MGMT’s career. Perhaps this is as they would wish. For all their boasting about gorging on the debauched fruits of fame, you sense that they‘ve always felt guilty of selling out at some level. For anyone with a commercial stake in their future, however, the months ahead are likely to be rocky indeed.