Pretenders to the Throne
Retro-pop sensations MGMT take time out from hanging with movie stars and partying like its 1979 to talk about their overnight success.
Ed Power, 04 Dec 2008
SUDDENLY ON THE SIDES OF BUSES
Andrew Vanwyngarden wants to die. Spread-eagled on a couch amidst the vintage splendour of Dublin’s Library Bar, the MGMT frontman is suffering the mother of all hangovers. When his chicken soup arrives, you fear he might actually plonk head first into the broth and start dozing.
“We were up pretty late last night,” explains his MGMT partner Ben Goldwasser. “You know, the life we lead gets surreal. I call my girlfriend and she asks me how my day was and it’s like: ‘Well, we did a photoshoot and then played a festival and then we were driven to an interview and then we did some TV – so what did you get up to, honey?’”
You’ll forgive the Brooklyn twosome if they feel their feet have barely touched the floor this past year. Since the release last March of their wickedly catchy debut single ‘Time To Pretend’, MGMT (pronounced ‘M G M T’ by the way: Goldwasser and Vanwyngarden ceased trading as ‘The Management’ when a group of the same name threatened to sue) have hopscotched to the top of Planet Indie. The months since have been a blur: they’ve partied with Kelly Osbourne, shot the breeze backstage with Kirsten Dunst, opened for Radiohead, toured America with Beck and sold an astonishing 30,000 albums in Ireland alone, where ‘Time To Pretend’ and super-freaky follow-up ‘Electric Feel’ have taken up permanent residency on the airwaves. If you visited New York last summer, you might even have caught sight of their mugs, looming down from passing buses. MGMT may be big everywhere but in Manhattan they’re literally 20 feet tall.
“Oh man – the Converse ads,” giggles Goldwasser. “That was frickin’ weird. Our manager asked if we wanted to do a photoshoot for Converse and we were like ‘yeah, that’s cool, whatever’. Then on tour, we kept receiving emails from our friends: ‘I was walking through the Village today and I saw your picture on the back of the bus’. Like, what the fuck? When we got back to New York, I remember clearly, getting off the subway at Union Square – and there we were, on this poster next to Pharrell Williams and Julian Casablancas. I guess people were going, ‘Well there’s Pharrell, there’s the dude from The Strokes – hey, who the fuck are those two guys?’ I looked like a hobo Michael Jackson.”
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