MGMT: “We're not a band that's focused on hits”

“It’s funny; it’s kind of like being in purgatory.”

Ben Goldwasser is speaking with me from his Brooklyn home, where he’s preparing to go back out on the road in the dying days of a summer that’s seen himself and the other half of MGMT, Andrew VanWyngarden, making sporadic live appearances, ahead of the release of their self-titled third record later this month.

“We’ve played a bunch of shows this summer; a few in Canada, and we’ve gone around the U.S. a little bit. It’s always an awkward time when the new record’s not out yet; you can’t play too much new stuff because nobody knows it. We’re gonna slip a couple more in there for this next run of dates, though.”

MGMT, their self-titled third album, is the first offering from the band since 2010′s divisive Congratulations, and came about, by their own admission, much more organically than their last effort. “We started working on the record about a year and a half ago, I think. We were just getting together in our studio in Brooklyn – which we don’t have any more – and just figuring out some basic things about how we were going to approach it. We pretty much had ‘Alien Days’ written there and then, and once we had a few other ideas recorded, we booked some time up in Buffalo, New York with Dave Fridmann. We went out there in March of 2012, I think, and we got the whole thing done in one go.”

Fridmann was also behind the production desk on the duo’s debut full-length, Oracular Spectacular, but Goldwasser insists that the decision to bring him back to work on MGMT isn’t indicative of a sonic shift back towards the likes of ‘Electric Feel’ and ‘Time to Pretend’. “I feel like Dave understands us really well at this point. What we were looking for on production was somebody who could help us to organise our ideas and keep us on track, rather than try to become an active part of the creative process – we didn’t want that kind of heavy involvement. Dave already really likes the way that we go about things, and he’s someone we felt we could trust.”

For Congratulations, VanWyngarden and Goldwasser made the decision to bring in a host of session musicians to record with, but reverted to working alone this time around, an approach Goldwasser feels was ultimately to their benefit. “We started out working on the record just between the two of us, and I think we realised that we tend to get things done more efficiently that way, purely because there’s a really important implicit understanding between us about the direction we want to take things in. There’ll be little arguments from time to time, but we usually find we can come to conclusions about what we like and what we don’t quicker when there isn’t any kind of external input musically. I think things just got going so well from the start that we never felt like we needed to bring anybody else in. The songwriting process has always just been a straight-up, collaborative thing between the two of us anyway; it’s normally just us developing on a little melody or something like that, and then once the music’s in place, Andrew takes care of the lyrics.”

If Congratulations sounded a little reserved by way of comparison to the constantly colourful Oracular, then MGMT is the sound of the band coming back out of their shell, whilst still being faithful to the experimental textures and vintage pop sensibilities that underscored the likes of ‘Flash Delirium’ and ‘Siberian Breaks’. Early critical reaction has noted the influence of Aphex Twin, but Goldwasser claims that there’s nothing new in that respect.

“We’ve actually always been into Aphex Twin; I think his influence goes right back to when we were in college, when we were making more electronic stuff. Since the last album, I know Andrew’s been listening to a lot of deep house and I’ve been into tons of punk rock stuff, so we’ve kind of been all over the place in terms of influences over the past couple of years. I don’t really think there was anything that really overtly had an impact on the album stylistically. A lot of what we were listening to rubbed off on the record, but there was nothing we were trying to emulate. What really shaped the way that the record sounds is that we’ve tried out new things, like sequencers and drum machines and modular synths, things that we felt represented, for us at least. a really different way of working with sound.”

VanWyngarden has already commented that, on reflection, Congratulations bears the hallmarks of what he described as a ‘paranoid’ mindset during its production. Goldwasser agrees, and adds that a whirlwind of live dates and promotional commitments left the duo burnt out after Oracular.

“We managed to take a really nice break this time, before we got started again. I do think the overall tone of this record is a lot more positive in a lot of ways. Around the time we made the last one, we both just felt that a lot of things were kind of coming crashing down on us all at once, and we didn’t feel as if we were really in control of our own destiny. I think you can hear in the music that we felt pretty small in the world, which is what Andrew was talking about. The new album is more about facing the world head on – confronting it, and making something positive out of it.”

There hasn’t, though, been too much of a concerted effort to move away from the sound of their last album. “I think in purely sonic terms, the only thing we maybe consciously thought about making different to Congratulations was perhaps toning down some of the stylistic juxtaposition that we were really interested in on that record. We just weren’t thinking about that kind of thing this time around. For the most part, though, we’ve tended to treat each record as its own thing so far.”

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The Congratulations tour saw MGMT turn their live shows into multi-sensory experiences, with complex lighting and visually arresting projections becoming a key consideration. “If anything, it’s going to be even more a part of it this time,” says Goldwasser. “Our friend Alejandro Crawford is still working with us, and he just seems to be constantly improving. He’s been reaching out to other artists to have them contribute ideas that are tailored to the new music, which is pretty exciting. It’s nice for us to have people like that on board, because when we’re on stage, we’re just completely caught up in recreating these sonic textures, and it means we’re obviously not the most animated guys to watch; it’s not like we’re jumping around all night. I think giving people something to engage with visually is pretty important.”

Audiences might be getting a completely original light show, then, but the same might not hold true musically; MGMT features a cover of an obscure sixties track, ‘Introspection’ by Faine Jade. “It’s a song Andrew’s really been into for a long time now. He played it back to me and I liked it, and he ended up starting his own version when he was at a loose end in the studio one day. We finished it up pretty quickly when I came in, and we realised that lyrically it fit well with a lot of the themes on the album. I guess it just seemed like a cool idea to put a cover on there; it’s not something you see a lot of people doing these days.”

Despite Congratulations being widely interpreted as an attempt to shy away from making music in the same vein as Oracular‘s anthemic hat-trick of singles, Goldwasser confirms that the duo are keen to give each of their records equal representation at their gigs. “We still love playing that older stuff. It’s a lot of fun to construct the set in a way that allows us to have these different musical pockets with all these different styles coming together. We wouldn’t want it to be completely homogenous; I think the best way to go about it is to have a couple of dancier songs and then maybe some quieter songs that are a little more drawn out. The crowds seem to really get into that way of doing things.”

‘Kids’, the track that’s arguably the pair’s best-known and that they’ve expressed mixed feelings towards in the past, has been conspicuous by its absence during this summer tour. “It’s not like it was an intentional thing to distance ourselves from it or anything. The main thing with that song is that we’ve always struggled to find a way to make it work live. We’ve tried different approaches with it, whether it’s an electronic-driven version like it is on the record, or a version with a live band, but we’ve never quite nailed it. Plus, I’m not sure it really fits with a lot of the other songs in the set. It’s not an issue for us, but other people seem to keep bringing it up and making a big deal out of us dropping it. The truth is, we’re not a band that’s really focused on hits. We’ll probably play it again one day, though.”

Lead single ‘Your Life Is a Lie’ met with a decidedly mixed online reaction when a live performance of the track on David Letterman aired a few hours after I spoke with Goldwasser; it’s accompanied by a bizarre music video, the thinking behind which he was able to elucidate.

“We’ve found ourselves really fascinated recently with political art from the early sixties; we love all that stuff from the beatnik generation, and we just wanted to make something in the spirit of that, with all this random imagery thrown together. I think it’s pretty funny. I mean, on the one hand, the song is kind of political and there is a message in there, but at the same time, it’s pretty ridiculous, and I think the video reflects both sides of that.”

Generally speaking, it’s become a relative rarity to see a self-titled record popping up years after the artist’s debut has been released, but Goldwasser is adamant that MGMT isn’t supposed to be interpreted as a categorical representation of their sound. ”It started out as a working title, I suppose, and nothing else ended up jumping out of us. I guess it’s kind of funny to self-title a record a few years down the line from starting out, but it definitely wasn’t meant as us trying to say that this record is some kind of definitive statement on our part. I’m not sure we’ll ever make one of those; we’ve still got a lot more to offer.”

MGMT was released on September 17 via Columbia. The band will play the UK in October:

12 – ABC, Glasgow
13 – Civic Hall, Wolverhampton
14 – Apollo, Manchester
16 – Forum, London