So Young Magazine: MGMT

Everyone knows MGMT. The band who dominated the late noughties with their synth pop smash hits, have spent the last ten years putting out brilliant, if at times baffling, albums. With their new album ‘Little Dark Age’ out in the world, we called up Ben and Andrew (in that order) to talk cooking, computers and why the kids might just be alright.

Q: The new songs are great. ‘When You Die’ particularly. There’s something about that song that feels really new, it got us really excited about MGMT again.

A: I’m glad you felt that way. I think we like to change it up on every record. I don’t know. Like to us, we don’t really have a sound that’s like our sound. We just keep trying stuff. But I’m glad you felt that way. ‘When you Die’ was the first song we finished off the record actually.

Q: It seems with you guys there are a lot of narratives floating about. MGMT is a name a lot of people probably know, but the image beyond that can maybe get pretty warped…

A: Yeah, I mean when we put our first record out we appeared wearing a bunch of face paint and psychedelic clothes and all this stuff and people just assumed that’s what our identity was, but it was just for the video for ‘Time to Pretend’. So we dressed like that and then people thought that we were always like that and were coming to our concerts dressed up… In reality, I’m a shy nerd who likes to spend a lot of time at home and wears jeans and a t-shirt most of the time and I was like, this is kind of ridiculous. And then it’s been really strange to hear people’s interpretations about what’s happened over the last 10 years as a band. Because I think a lot of emphasis gets placed on us reacting to a lack of commercial success on our last few albums. Whereas for us, it’s been a great opportunity to make the music that we want to make and to be able to make a living in this industry and not to have to be too obsessed about having a big single.

Q: The other weird thing is listening back to ‘Kids’ now. Or ‘Time to Pretend’ say. Those are weird songs. They’re not like verse-chorus pop songs.

A: At the time it was not apparent that they were songs that could be hits. When someone at Columbia Records reached out to us and decided that they wanted to give us a five album record contract, we were just laughing, you know. We couldn’t believe that they actually thought that people were going to want to listen to this. But we were like, ok, you know, if you think this is a good idea then I guess you’re the record label! But we didn’t really see the commercial angle.

Q: Do you ever just feel like, what the hell. How did this happen?

A: Yeah, kind of constantly. But especially the last couple of years. Andrew and I have been living very normal lives. Getting more into things like cooking or whatever, and then to be going back out on this little promotional tour and being back in Europe and talking about ourselves all day [laughs] it’s a strange life.

Q: So is cooking your thing?

A: Yeah, cooking. I’m also into computer programming. That’s something I started doing to keep sane on the road. To do a disciplined thing where there’s a right way to do it and if you make a mistake it doesn’t work.

Q: This is a segue, but are you one of these crypto people?

A: I think it’s like in some way it feels just very telling of the time we’re in right now. I think it’s such a confusing, interesting thing. It’s almost like an alchemical thing. It’s just like creating something out of nothing. And assigning meaning to it. But then money is kind of like that too, but then we all believe in money…

Q: Do you get a chance to listen to much new music?

A: I’m really bad about it, I kind of stumble across things every now and then. Like Lemon Twigs, I didn’t really know their music very well, and then I saw them play at this festival and I was like oh man, these guys are really at the top level.

Q: Yeah it can be super intimidating when you see these 17 year old kids who are so switched on with music or social media or business skills and just have their shit together.

A: I think it’s also easy for me to be jaded because I’m from the generation that crossed over between. I remember being young and people didn’t have cell phones and if you were going to hang out with people you had to make a plan and go and meet at a place and if the plan changed and you didn’t find out about it, you’d show up there and nobody’s there and remembering what that was like. I’m not like nostalgic for it. It’s more like it’s confusing to me, to not be of the generation that’s just like, this stuff is normal. But I try not to be cynical about it. I don’t want to judge technology too much, but at the same time it’s a strange existence.

Illustration by Alec Doherty

Q: Hi Andrew, so tell me about the visual side for this record. Because it seems to have a really strong identity. Are you and Ben involved in that side of things?

A: Yeah we are. We have been on pretty much every album, but with this album we went back to working with friends of ours and it’s been way more fun. The first video for ‘Little Dark Age’ was directed and written by two close friends of ours who we went to college with. They really get our humour and our references so it was fun to take cues from that to put into the video. The ‘Me and Michael’ one which came out recently that was fully mine and Ben’s concept. It’s kind of a complicated.

Q: Talk us through it...

A: Yeah it’s a little bit of satire on a major label like stealing this song. But it’s kind of more than that. We told this tale of MGMT stealing this song idea from a Filipino band and in our music video the song becomes really popular and we get called out as plagiarists and it all comes crashing down.

And the thing is we actually sent a friend of ours to Manila to get in touch with a band called True Faith and they produced a video and made a version of the song and we made a video for that. So the video concept seems to be happening in real life. Similarly, it’s fun to tell this sort of ironic story about these college kids imagining pop stardom. It’s kind of funny. It’s a song about our relationship in some ways.

Q: Do you listen to many new bands?

A: I do a little but um, but probably because I’m always collecting records and getting into the home stereo, almost like hi-fi world I’ve really got into vinyl. But I definitely check out new music. I listen to the radio when I’m driving. But I wouldn’t say I’m too clued in.

Q: When you write do you write conceptually. With narratives in mind?

A: Maybe more in the past. You know I think that on our first record we had this really strong idea of imagining this post apocalyptic world where these kids had banded together. We normally have concepts but on this album we didn’t think so thematically. At least lyrically. The theme maybe would be the rediscovery of the creative bond that Ben and I have, and getting it to feel as exciting as it did when we met in college. And we actually did that by collaborating with other artists and by opening up the creative concepts to work with friends and not cutting everyone out, like we had done maybe on our second and third album.

Q: As college friends, it must have been weird to have your friendship suddenly become your livelihood…

A: It definitely puts a strain on the friendship side of things when you have to deal with business or make decisions on legal things. It’s weird to have to combine those two sides. But I think actually that we’ve weathered the 15 years or however long that we’ve known each other remarkably well. Especially as a duo. I’ve seen other duos that have been wanting to kill each other. We’ve come back to a spot where it’s fun again and where we get to have a normal life and a tour life.

Words by Rob Knaggs