By their senior year, they had toned down considerably on-stage, and began augmenting their live sound with backing musicians. For their full-length debut, the duo partnered with producer Dave Fridmann and recorded Oracular Spectacular , a far more musically expansive album that was released digitally in late A traditional CD release followed in January , and Oracular Spectacular ultimately enjoyed both critical approval and commercial success, with the album selling over , copies in the U.
Released in , the record found them growing more ambitious and quirkily psychedelic, with a song dedicated to two of their heroes: Dan Treacy of Television Personalities and Brian Eno. The album debuted at number two on the U. Billboard chart and the band toured much of the year, while also appearing on TV and playing many festivals.
The following year, the bandmembers dug deep into their record collections to curate an installment of the Late Night Tales mixtape series and began work on their third album with Dave Fridmann. The self-titled effort was something of a return to the expansive sound of their debut, but with the same amount of weirdness that permeated Congratulations.
The record received mixed reviews, but still broke the Top 20 of the Billboard album chart. After the band finished touring behind the album, they decided to take a break from making music together.
After roughly a year of inaction, Goldwasser and Van Wyngarden began trading song ideas back and forth via computer, then decided to write and work on arrangements together. They brought Fridmann back and added producer Patrick Wimberly of Chairlift to the team.
Album Of The Week. MGMT never had a chance to sell out because they arrived already bought-in. Instead, after finding success on their debut album, the band adhered to the opposite trope, burying their heads further into the sand in their pursuit of music so outwardly antagonistic as to dare listeners to continue riding the hype train. Pulling a Pearl Jam, you could call it.
But the extent to which MGMT struck universal adoration during their first go round is difficult to overstate. Which is why when they took an even more freewheeling, shaggy approach and began making actual psychedelic music, the masses dispersed, leaving behind a comparatively tiny hardcore fan base. In order to ensure the mainstream would not once again follow their tracks, MGMT began to wear aimlessness as a mission statement.
That reach towards something the duo considered more artistically honest left us instead with Congratulations and MGMT. At their best moments, which proved the two songwriters held considerable skill in crafting unique sounds and converging disparate genres, both albums still felt as though they were coming from a place of retaliation, rather than revelation. The music on Little Dark Age understands this. The most impressive departure the album takes from its predecessors is that each track stands alone as succinct and fully-realized.
MGMT were huge. The duo graced with three festival classics: Time to Pretend provided them with a manifesto, Kids an anthem and Electric Feel a floorfiller. They were part of a group of acts, which included Yeasayer, Passion Pit and Santogold, who went from Brooklyn warehouse infamy to suddenly proper on-David-Letterman famous. Along the way, they inspired a Gucci runway show and made hippy headbands a thing.
Behind the scenes, however, the relationship between the two members was of complementary opposites: the analytical Ben Goldwasser and the free-spirited Andrew VanWyngarden. Now, after years of being out of sync, the oscillations of culture are again lining up with MGMT. And, crucially, the frosty relationship between band and audience has thawed. The body language is not overly moist. VanWyngarden, hunched on his stool, occasionally chews on a cuticle as he mulls over a question.
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