OMG It's MGMT
They may have been one of the electro-pop sensations of the past few years, with some serious hit singles to their name. But with their second album, Congratulations, MGMT have flipped controversially into another dimension. So how come they’re so intent on leaving pop behind? And can they bring their audience with them?
Patrick Freyne, 21 Apr 2010
MGMT are in the firing line. With a hugely successful official debut album under their belts in the form of the aptly named Oracular Spectacular, their follow-up was one of the most eagerly-awaited rock’n’roll events of 2010. The record business needs good news stories and the hope was that this would be one of them. First time out they went double platinum in Ireland (Sony Ireland made this their most successful territory in the world), platinum in the UK and Australia and gold in the US, among other markets, the latter with almost 600,000 sales to their credit.
With the right follow-up, industry insiders argued, they could blossom into one of the hottest acts on the planet. Any band with a debut that sells two million, give or take a few, has to be a contender for selling five with its sequel – or ten if they get really lucky. MGMT’s debut peaked at a modest No. 38 in the US charts. This time out, if Sony in the US could match Ireland’s performance with Oracular Spectacular and get them to No. 5, who knows what global sales stats they might rack up? But, of course, you need the album with which to woo the yet-to-be-converted. And it might help if those who had been turned on by Oracular Spectacular were immediately convinced by what they heard.
No such luck. Instead, Ben Goldwasser and Andrew VanWyngarden have been plunged into controversy on a grand scale. The ether has been boiling with fan reactions that border on accusations of betrayal: this is not MGMT as we know and love them. Goldwasser himself has acknowledged that fans are really, really angry at the band for turning their back on radio-friedly pop. And the truth is that right now, almost no one can hear the potential hit singles on Congratulations. In fact the band themselves hinted that they might not want to release any tracks at all from the record as singles.
Reviewing their Academy performance in Hot Press, Ed Power was among those confused, if not downright disturbed by their transformation. “It might be more accurate,” he wrote, reflecting on Goldwater’s acknowledgement of fans’ anger, “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 on our eardrums a 12-minute slab of droopy, drony noodling such as ‘Siberian Breaks’, recreated in all its obtuse glory at The Academy.”
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