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MGMT, formerly known as The Managment, are an American neo-psychedelic rock band from Brooklyn, New York. They started out making trippy, catchy pop music before becoming an equally trippy pastiche of 60s and 70s rock with Congratulations.
Albums:
- Climbing To New Lows (2005 demo album)
- Oracular Spectacular (2008): "Kids", "Time To Pretend", "Electric Feel", "The Youth"
- Congratulations (2010): "Flash Delirium", "Siberian Breaks", "It's Working", "Congratulations"
- MGMT (2012), upcoming
Tropes:
- Big Lipped Alligator Moment: In-universe: the "It's Working" video appears to be about a machine that generates Big Lipped Alligator Moments.
- Black Sheep Hit: "Kids" is a bubblegum electro-pop tune that sounds absolutely nothing like their other songs. Naturally, it became their biggest hit.
- Brian Eno: Depicted as a literal wizard of sound in "Brian Eno".
- Crystal Dragon Jesus: The "mystic referee" in "Metanoia" is not God, but Carl Jung.
- Dada: Back when Andrew and Ben were still in college, their "performances" would include things like erecting a tent on stage and smoking pot in it, or simply leaving halfway through the show while they played a prerecorded tape of their music.
- Epic Rocking: "Metanoia" and "Siberian Breaks" are 10+ minute tracks that sound like 5-6 songs in one. "Flash Delirium" is a 4 minute track that sounds like 5-6 songs in one
- Face of the Band: Benjamin Goldwasser and Andrew VanWyngarden were the original members, and by a huge margin the most well-known.
- Fake-Out Fade-Out: "Siberian Breaks" has three of these. The real ending is actually more abrupt than the fake ones.
- Fan Vid: This is not the official "Kids" video, but it became big enough for the stars of it to have a cameo in the "Electric Feel" video.
- Faux Symbolism: There's Illuminati imagery inside the "Flash Delirium" video, seemingly thrown in for its own sake.
- Loudness War: In Oracular Spectacular they intentionally turned up the gain to get a "dirty" mix.
- New Sound Album: Congratulations. Many people had dismissed it as a pretentious act of intentional career suicide before release (A 12-minute song! Sega Genesis album art! No singles! Wait, "Flash Delirium" is a single, and what did I just watch?), but upon release most reviewers and fans warmed up to it.
- Odd Friendship: They've collaborated several times with French house label Ed Banger Records[1], of all things. A supergroup called the Ed Banger All-Stars was even formed solely to remix "Siberian Breaks".
- Ode to Intoxication: Many of their songs are either this, ironic odes to intoxication or an Ode to Sobriety.
- Protest Song: "The Youth" is a song about protesting for the sake of protesting. The band explained that they wanted to say something meaningful to young people, but weren't sure what.
- Sesame Street Cred: They performed a song called "Art Is Everywhere" for Yo Gabba Gabba.
- Sex, Drugs and Rock and Roll: "Time To Pretend": Sex, drink, move to Paris, marry models, get the models pregnant, choke on your own vomit, die.
- Student and Master Team: "Brian Eno" is about one of these. Sadly, the song does not actually feature Brian Eno.
- Surreal Music Video: All of them, with "Kids", "Time To Pretend" and "Flash Delirium" being the weirdest.
- Textless Album Cover: Their band name likes to appear and disappear from several albums and singles.
- What Do You Mean It Wasn't Made on Drugs?: The founding members admitted to using many psychedelics back in college, and intentionally played it up during their older interviews. How many of their songs were actually made on drugs is a mystery.