Review: MGMT @ Radio City Music Hall, NYC

(08/17/2010)

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Hey Hipsters …There’s a fucking Rock n Roll Show Going On!

I’m not going to whine about the sorry state of rock n’ roll or anything like that. Record sales are down, concert ticket sales are down. radio sucks, MTV hasn’t aired a video in God knows how long… Yeah, yeah, yeah. Boo fucking hoo. I actually don’t think any of that necessarily reflects the quality of music being produced right now. Sure, the signal to noise ratio has obviously taken a hit. According to Nielsen Soundscan 98,000 albums were released in 2009 – 98,000, that’s a staggeringly large number (only 2.1% sold over 5,000 copies, though, and that 2.1% accounted for 90% of all record sales in 2009). If I’m doing my math right, and the average running time of those 98,000 records is an hour, it would take you just about… oh, 11 fucking years to listen to them all! 11 years. Now the majority of those 98,000 albums are probably dogs, and there’s no reason to listen to them even if you had the time, but if even only one percent of them are in some way worthwhile, that would amount to almost 1,000 quality records released in 2009. Who the hell has time to listen to even that many? In any case there’s probably just as much “good” music, however you want to define that term, being produced today as there ever has been… and going by the numbers probably more than ever. There’s just a lot more for this good music to compete with these days both in terms of consumer’s entertainment dollar and time, and unfortunately a lot of the good stuff is drowned in the vast sea of mediocrity and dogshit that is endemic to post-whatever 21st century pop culture. My point is there’s good stuff out there, if you’re willing to look hard enough. And if you’re not, the fine folks at Live4Ever World Headquarters are here to help! (Like how I threw that in there, Mr. editor? And I managed not to mention any of our competitors’ sites like Pitchfo@#%$^&#%!!!…. Ouch. That hurt.) All of that’s just my way of saying that I’m not here to lament the decaying fortunes of rock n roll. Cause they ain’t decaying.

What I am going to do is… well, I’m gonna bitch about the audience. But let me start with the venue. Although I question the wisdom of staging an indie rock show at Radio City Music Hall, I can’t deny that with its Art Deco styling and its luxurious carpeting (more on that later) it sure is one snazzy place, albeit one perhaps more suited to a performance of the Rockettes than that of a rock band, and I have to acknowledge the fact that since MSG took over operations of Radio City it is now a de facto venue for rock and pop shows in the Big Apple. Anyway, as I’m sure it is on many a night during the holiday season when its annual Christmas Spectacular is staged, on this fine evening Radio City was swarmed by gaggles of tweenagers (better that they’re at an MGMT show than at a Justin Bieber concert, no?) accompanied by their parents. For the life of me, I couldn’t figure out whether it was the tweens who had dragged their folks out of the house to see the latest band to be thrust into the spotlight by an appearance on Nickelodeon’s Yo Gabba Gabba (is it any coincidence that the stars of the show – including the spiked red dildo looking guy – showed up at the show the next night? Hmmm? I’m actually really upset that I missed this. Must have been hilarious), or whether the Park Slope set was trying to give their youngins a head-start on the road to hipster-ville. I have no bones to pick with the tweens or their parents, though. Their kids and I’m actually happy to see that a band making interesting music can find an audience that will perhaps mature with them. That’s actually awesome.

No, no, no. My gripes are squarely focused on the non-tweens in attendance. You know who I’m talking about: the horrid hipster set. Yes the hipsters were out in full skinny jean force. And they played exactly to type. It’s like a John Cusack movie… doesn’t matter which one… you know exactly the kind of character he’s going to play. Enough with self-loathing angst already. Sheesh. Cusack gets nowhere near enough shit for his cinematic crimes. He’s really on a level with Richard Gere for theatrical douchebaggery, and yet he somehow manages to slip under the critical radar. How? Why? It’s a conspiracy, I say! I guess my buddy Pete summed up Cusack’s career best: “Ugh. Find a new role. Or go make out with your sister, who at least has some character flexibility.” You tell him, Pete. So just like a cliché John Cusack character, the hipsters behaved exactly as you would expect and couldn’t have given off more of a cooler-than-thou vibe if they were being paid to do so. Then again, getting paid might be a little too close to having a job for some of the hipsters, so scratch that. Essentially the crowd was listless, disinterested and aloof the entire night (except when the tweens heard the only two songs they’ve probably heard on the radio – guess which ones). Most of the numbers played by the band were greeted with lukewarm applause. The big spenders sitting in the orchestra seats seemed like they were more interested in talking, texting, Tweeting, Facebooking and checking in on Foursquare (don’t forget to follow Live4Ever on Twitter! and friend Live4Ever on Facebook!) than in what was going on onstage. The most excitement I saw out of the hipsters was when the guy sitting in the row behind me puked all over Radio City’s fancy carpeting. Must have eaten some bad shellfish or something. At least the herbal aroma wafting in the air of Radio City helped mask the puke stink. Hipsters are good for something after all!

When it comes to ranting about rock n’ roll (and berating an adoring audience) no one does it quite like Pete Townshend used to before he got old (although I’m willing to bet he’s glad his hopes weren’t fulfilled in that case). There’s a somewhat famous incident that occurred during the Who’s tour in support of Tommy that also happened to be captured on tape. Facing an audience that clearly wasn’t paying attention and was pissing him off, you can hear Townshend bitchily admonish the audience to: “Sit down, stand up or lay down, but shut up! It’s a fuckin rock-‘n-roll concert, not a fuckin tea party!” It would have been nice if Andrew Vanwyngarden had the balls to do something like that. Except no one was paying attention anyway, so it probably wouldn’t have mattered. I like to pick on bands like Kings of Leon and Arcade Fire and poke fun at how they don’t deserve the audience they have (I still can’t believe either band sold out MSG), but in this case the audience didn’t deserve MGMT, who played their asses off at what was kinda sorta their hometown show.

One of the things that impresses me about MGMT is how well their songs, which on record benefit from a great deal of production trickery, translate to a live setting. The arrangements of are often lush and multi layered with lots of swirling psychedelic effects, and it’s a testament to the musicianship of the band that they pull them off as well as they do. Stylistically the band runs the gamut from electro-dance like grooves to punkish rockers and delicate ballads. So there are a lot of different moods which the band is capable of evoking. In any case, dwarfed by an asymmetrical video screen backdrop, MGMT opened their set with the strummed acoustic guitar intro of “Pieces of What” from their debut Oracular Spectacular which gradually morphed into a slice of psychedelic pop that would make Brian Wilson smile (Get it? Brian Wilson? Smile? OK, that was kind of lame). Early standouts in the set were “Electric Feel” with its almost contradictory ¾ driving disco beat and “Destrokk” from the band’s 2005 Time to Pretend EP.

(via Lukretiah)

“Flash Delirium”, the frenetic lead single off Congratulations, was explosive in live performance and worked a lot better than I would have expected considering how many different sections and styles the songs touches upon in 4 minutes. “Of Moons, Birds and Monsters,” one of the lesser know songs from the band’s first record was tremendous and evoked the psychedelic spirit of the Summer of Love while maintaining a 21st century edge.

The band really hit its stride, though, in the last four numbers of the main set. “Time to Pretend” got a great reaction from the crowd and was the first time you could actually hear the audience singing along, and was followed by “Siberian Breaks,” the epic centerpiece of Congratulations, and it was… well, it was kind of fucking epic actually, and probably the most impressive number of the night. It was prog rock without the noodling and managed to stay interesting for all of its twelve minutes. If the band’s hell-bent on committing career suicide there’s worse ways to go than with something as good as this. Anyone listen to the Rolling Stones’ Dirty Work recently? A song you may have heard of was next, about which I’ll have more to say in a second, but as you might expect got the largest ovation of the evening. They then fittingly closed out the main set with the title track of the new record.

After a short break the band came back out for a four song encore (not that the audience actually called for an encore, mind you, although the band did deserve it), which featured a rousing rendition of “The Handshake” and ended with a tender performance of “I Found A Whistle”, the sleeper hit off of Congratulations. All in all, the band put on a whale of a performance, sounding tight and confident throughout the night. A minor quibble would be the sound of the venue, which left something to be desired. As is often the case in a boxy theater, the sound was a little bit boomy in the low end (do we really need that much kick drum in the mix?) and overall could have been louder, at least loud enough to drown out the talking hipsters, fer chrissakes!

Although I have mostly kudos for MGMT’s performance, on one point, however, I feel they deserve to be savagely, viciously and mercilessly torn to shreds. This is the second time I’ve seen them in concert and on both occasions when the band performed “Kids” it was to the musical accompaniment of a prerecorded backing track. WTF? I mean really, how fucking lame is that? It’s not like the band isn’t capable of playing the damn song. Some of their other material, especially cuts from Congratulations, are far more intricate in their arrangements than “Kids” is and they manage to pull them off live without a hitch. Heck, I think the live performance of some of these tracks actually improves upon the recorded versions. So what gives? To me that was a seriously lame move by the band, and an inexcusable and inexplicable one as well. Ah, whatever. What the fuck am I kvetching about this for? I bet none of the hipsters even noticed that the band members weren’t playing their instruments anymore. C’est la vie.

Nick Fokas