w
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represented by our label, because the
album ended up getting pegged as really
difficult and experimental. And it was in
some ways, but it also wasn’t as hard to
get through as some people made it out to
be. So we were at a point where I didn’t
know what was going to happen, and it
took until early 2016 when we started
writing to see this little glimmer of, “Oh
yeah – we’ve still got it! We still have a
connection!”
MGMT, 2007
04•2018
other for 20 years, but it just felt like we
found our bond again, which was really
good.
IE: Ironically by putting the entire country
between you, with you living in
Rockaway Beach and Ben moving to L.A.
AV: Yeah. By getting as much distance
between us as possible. And if you had
talked to me at the end of 2014 or 2015, I
probably would never have guessed that
we would be sitting here, having made an
album that has pop songs on it, one that
our label likes. That’s just not the path that
I had foreseen. I was really uncertain, and
I was in a place of haziness as to where we
were going to go. Ben was moving to
California, so I didn’t know how that was
going to affect things. And the whole
album cycle with our third album was not
that fun, and it felt like we had been mis-
12 illinoisentertainer.com april 2018
IE: It’s hilarious that, sonically, the sunni-
est song on the album is called “When You
Die.”
AV: Ha! Some of our friends were really
questioning our decision to put that song
out – they thought it was going to be a real
turn-off for people. But I’m really glad we
did it – in some ways, it’s the most MGMT
song on the album. That’s something that
we’ve always been into – having this bub-
bly, poppy music with these really heavy
lyrics. So I think the album has this arc,
where it’s fighting with itself and then it
gets somewhere positive by the end of it,
in a psycho-therapeutic way.
IE: The underlying message seems to be,
‘You want hits? Here! Here’s some fucking
hits!’
AW : Yeah, That’s a nice way to look at it.
But I think that was more for us, me and
Ben, than anybody else. It was me telling
myself, “Look, motherfucker – you can
still actually write great songs!”
Tom Lanham