UK: After dominating the UK in 2008, Brooklyn-based band MGMT "itching" for home success

Record ID: 1540728

  • Title: UK: After dominating the UK in 2008, Brooklyn-based band MGMT "itching" for home success
  • Date: 11th December 2008
  • Summary: (SOUNDBITE) (English) BEN GOLDWASSER OF MGMT, SAYING: "We've noticed that irony, at least irony as we know it, doesn't always carry over when we're travelling. ANDREW VANWYNGARDEN OF MGMT, SAYING: "Maybe in France but I think here they get the tongue in cheek aspect of it, more quickly than they did in the U.S."
  • Embargoed: 26th December 2008 10:09
  • Keywords:
  • Topics: Arts / Culture / Entertainment
  • Reuters ID: LVA3OJIRC2C24X3S28H5XWHAU2CI
  • Aspect Ratio: 4:3
  • Story Text: Psychadelic rockers MGMT whose quirky but catchy tunes dominated the British airwaves hope to replicate success abroad.
    Brooklyn-based electro art rockers MGMT entered 2008 as a band to watch as lauded by Rolling Stone magazine and the BBC News. Now at the end of the year, they not only lived up to the hype, they surpassed it. Their debut album "Oracular Spectacular" captures the essence of youth with its tongue-in-cheek lyrics, catchy hooks, and ode to Sixties psychedelia. It debuted at number twelve on the UK album chart and number one on the Billboard Top Heatseekers chart.
    The single "Electric Feel" has an unusual musical arrangement and falsetto vocals about an Amazonian woman with electrodes running through her body. "Time To Pretend" pokes fun at the cliched rock n' roll life with lyrics "Let's make some music, make some money, find some models for wives." And "Kids" samples the sound of children's laughter in a playground.
    The duo of Andrew VanWyngarden and Ben Goldwasser came up with the idea for a joke band while students at Wesleyan University in Connecticut. But the laughter turned serious and instead of trying to annoy fans, as they have admittedly tried to do in the beginning, they set out to win them over.
    Despite their success, VanWyngarden, originally from Tennessee, said they are oblivious to all the hype.

    "Yeah it's still new and weird and I don't think we really can get a good picture of what's going on. We feel pretty isolated. We're just a little group of dudes on a bus and we don't really pay attention to press or anything. People ask us that question, I don't know. I don't really feel any different than I did a year ago so that's good," VanWyngarden told Reuters Television before their sold out gig at the Shepherds Bush Empire in London.

    "We've noticed that irony, at least irony as we know it, doesn't always carry over when we're traveling," said Goldwasser.

    "Maybe in France but I think here they get the tongue in cheek aspect of it, more quickly than they did in the U.S," added VanWyngarden.
    With that in mind, VanWyngarden, the more outspoken of the pair, jokingly told Reuters about their troubling skin diseases, namely Goldwasser's eczema and VanWyngarden's psoriasis.

    "Basically everything that you do on tour like fly on airplanes or be on a bus, drinking, stressing out, climate change, stress, dehydration, all that stuff contributes to making skin diseases worse," said Goldwasser.
    It's this sense of the weird and wonderful which has turned audiences onto the band and they hope to continue their upward trajectory without falling into the rock cliche they are only all too familiar with.

    "Yeah I think we're trying not to be influenced too much by life on the road just because it's so stereotypical for bands to write their second album, they always write songs about touring or hardships of the road or missing home. We just want to make a crazy party album or something,"
    said Goldwasser.
    MGMT are currently touring Japan for the first time and Australia.
    Goldwasser plans to spend Christmas with family in the United States while VanWyngarden plans to be on a sun-soaked Australian beach for the holidays.
    The band will soon be working on their highly-anticipated second album.
    But instead of succumbing to fears of failure with their follow up, they plan to record first and deal with the consequences later.

    "Yeah we don't want to obsess over it, second album pressures, so we're just going to make something quickly and see what it's about," said VanWyngarden.
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