has a bunch of songs that I love and not
hear any of them. But I remember when
we played Coachella in 2010, our set got
cut short and we didn’t play “Kids,”
which was on the setlist. And incidents
like that kind of sealed our reputation as
trying to distance ourselves from those
songs.
IE: But people forget that MGMT formed
when you were attending Wesleyan
cess first and then we went obscure, and
that really threw off a lot of people. But the
fact that we made a song that was popular
at our college, and then became the one
song that people associated us with, and
then making the second album the way we
did, it was confusing for people. But I
think we probably relished that confusion
to a degree, because we liked avoiding
people’s expectations, and we liked mess-
ing with what people thought we should
04•2018
University in Connecticut, where you
studied under some avant-garde jazz com-
posers.
AV: Yeah. Real experimental music. And
that’ not something that people readily
connect the ties between – experimental
music and more formal studies of avant-
garde music that I did and our approach to
pop music. We were taught in college that
it was all about the concept first, so we
approached pop music like it was an
experiment, so we were always messing
with the idea of what a live show could be.
So it was always in our heads that it was a
riff on the pretentious, high-concept stuff
that we were learning, but applying it to,
say, Hall and Oates.
IE: But you really did push the aesthetic
envelope with your second and third
albums. You earned some cachet credit
with “Oracular,” and you spent it.
AV: We kind of went the opposite direction
that a lot of artists take. We had pop suc-
10 illinoisentertainer.com april 2018
be doing. We just liked going back to our
experimental roots, I guess.
IE: You found a happy art/pop medium on
this album.
AV: We figured out our course a bit. We’ve
always tried to have that split of having
pop moments and more far-out moments.
And through working with producer
Patrick Wimberly and collaborating with
other artists like Ariel Pink, and really just
writing more quickly, we scraped away
some of this preciousness we had about
songwriting. Which was really helpful for
us, because in college it was all just music
that made us laugh. It probably didn’t
make a lot of other people laugh, but we
would just crack up about an effect that
sounded like an insect or something. So in
some ways, we were getting back to that.
So I think this album is really important
and meaningful, because it documents the
rekindling of the creative friendship
between Ben and me. We’ve known each
April 6
The Vaccines Combat Sports
Blackberry Smoke Find A Light
Eels The Deconstruction
Kate Nash Yesterday Was Forever
Kylie Minogue Golden
Manic Street Preachers Resistance Is Futile
The Wonder Years Sister Cities
Thirty Seconds to Mars America
Zola Jesus Okovi: Additions
April 13
Brazilian Girls Let's Make Love
The Vaccines
Breaking Benjamin Ember
Harry Shearer Smalls Change
Jason Aldean Rearview Town
John Prine The Tree Of Forgiveness
Juliana Hatfield Juliana Hatfield Sings Olivia Newton-John
The Damned Evil Spirits
April 20
A Perfect Circle Eat The Elephant
Melvins Pinkus Abortion Technician
Old Crow Medicine Show Volunteer
Pennywise Never Gonna Die
Sting & Shaggy 44/876
Stryper God Damn Evil
Tim Burgess As I Was Now
April 27
Grouper Grid Of Points
Okkervil River In The Rainbow Rain
Speedy Ortiz Twerp Verse
Twin Shadow Caer
Willie Nelson Last Man Standing
Pennywise