Artist
MGMT
Why we feature this artist The obvious hooks lead somewhere less predictable MGMT’s first widely heard songs are bright enough to invite a dance and strange enough to complicate the invitation. Andrew VanWyngarden and Ben Goldwasser make pop melody part of a l…
- From
- United States
- Sound
- progressive rock, neo-psychedelia, electronica, psychedelic pop
- Active
- 2002–present
Start with the music
Tracks to explore
The artist, in context
The story of MGMT
Why we feature this artist
The obvious hooks lead somewhere less predictable
MGMT’s first widely heard songs are bright enough to invite a dance and strange enough to complicate the invitation. Andrew VanWyngarden and Ben Goldwasser make pop melody part of a larger psychedelic imagination, allowing humour, uncertainty and an awkward question to remain inside the tune. The albums become more interesting when the familiar singles are treated as doorways rather than a complete map.
Oracular Spectacular creates several kinds of expectation
Oracular Spectacular appeared in 2007, with Time to Pretend, Electric Feel and Kids becoming its most familiar reference points. The songs have different rhythmic characters, but all give a melodic figure an unusually vivid outline. The production can feel exuberant while the writing keeps some distance from the apparent glamour of the scene.
That mixture helps the record survive beyond its first burst of recognition. A listener can enjoy the immediate hook and still find something unresolved beneath it. The rest of the album supplies a wider setting for those tensions, rather than simply repeating the same kind of single.
Congratulations lets the album choose its own route
Congratulations in 2010, produced with Sonic Boom, makes the duo’s appetite for another route particularly clear. Flash Delirium, Song for Dan Treacy and the title track occupy a more changeable sequence, with instrumental detail and less conventional shapes given room to develop. The self-titled album in 2013 continues that exploration. Little Dark Age in 2018 brings another set of clear hooks into view, including Me and Michael, without making the intervening records disappear. Across these chapters, accessibility and oddness remain close companions. MGMT can use a clean synthesizer figure or a direct refrain to establish a song, then let the surrounding atmosphere make the first impression less certain. That willingness to leave a small disturbance inside the pleasure gives the catalogue a continuing identity beyond the debut’s best-known choruses.
Essential releases
Oracular Spectacular
Time to Pretend, Electric Feel and Kids introduce contrasting rhythmic settings for the duo’s bright, slightly unsettled psychedelic-pop imagination.
Congratulations
The Sonic Boom collaboration gives album sequencing and less predictable musical shapes a larger role, opening another route beyond the first singles.
Little Dark Age
The title track and Me and Michael bring concise hooks into a later chapter whose atmosphere keeps the apparent simplicity intriguingly unstable.