Boundary Issues!

The summer before last at Montreal’s Osheaga music festival, I interviewed the adorable Ben and Andrew of MGMT. (Who have a new album coming out in early 2010, called Congratulations. Congratulations!) Anyway, before they went on, their dressing room was loaded with a cute little boho entourage in shorts and fringes that appeared to have been transplanted from Max Fish in NYC’s East Village, and I wished I’d been warmer when Andrew asked me my astrological sign. (I’m a Sagittarius, in case you were wondering.) But I felt awkward, you know, boundaries and all. Which brings me to the point of this story: Boundary issues! Sure, over the years I’ve become good friends with a few people I’ve interviewed (hi, friends!). It’s easy when there’s a connection and they’re spilling their guts out and I’m listening, nodding and providing free rock star therapy. Or when we get along so peachily that the convo clearly must be continued at a more opportune time. But this is a rare phenomenon. Bottom line is, I’m there to do a job. So are the people I’m interviewing. I already have friends. So do they. I want to respect that professional distance while still engaging enough to have a real, meaningful, spontaneous conversation. (Interviews are kind of like acting in a scene with someone. You have to live out that connection in the moment, then shake hands and go back to your real life.)

When in doubt, I always err on the side of being overly professional. Because I am. I mean, I love connecting with good people -- that’s basically why I do what I do. But connecting with someone on any real level has nothing to do with digging their music or wanting to hang out with rock stars. Ugh! It’s actually the opposite. I’m also paranoid about being mistaken for a groupie, or I’m shy, or they’re shy, and I’m cautious -- buffoons walk among us. So I’ve learned to be careful about who I let into my life, and famous people are even more wary. Open but selective, you know? So that’s my rant for the day. Boundary issues!!!

Here’s the MGMT article. (Did you know Ben got kidnapped by a guy with really long fingers?) And some photos that my dear friend Lili Wexu, voiceover artist and actress extraordinaire, shot of our Osheaga soirée. I do enjoy a nice corn on the cob. Good times.

MGMT (from Naked Eye, Fall 2008)
Set in what appears to be the galaxy’s most raging full-moon party ever, the video for “Electric Feel” features the boys of Brooklyn, NY-based MGMT dancing in a mossy forest with faerie creatures and hot girls, jamming on tribal instruments, and smearing radioactive goop all over themselves. The Diyonisian jamboree climaxes with a close-up of each fellow’s handsome visage while he flies through the night sky on a motorcycle, as if airborne bikes are simply an alternative mode of transport to the New York subway.

Meet the two young men behind this otherworldly operation, friends who still laugh at each other's frequent (and subtle) jokes: Ben Goldwasser, the chatty one, small of build with a friendly smile and mop of dark curls. Sporting a headband and cut-off jean shorts, he plays keyboards.

Andrew VanWyngarden, the quietly mischevious one who resembles a sexpot Peter Pan. Decked out in fringed suede boots, tie-dyed T-shirt, and painted-on black jeans straight out of Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Confused, he mans guitar and lead vocals. He's also fond of breaking silences by looking up from the scab he’s picking off his elbow, grinning seductively, and announcing, with surprising sincerity, how excited he is about whatever banality is up for discussion: bagels; the Sextrology book he’s reading on the bus; the ring he bought on the streets of Montreal; and how scary it is when crazy, transient tour life starts to feel normal.

He says it like this: “I’m excited.”

So, are a Jewish kid from the Adirondacks and a Memphis, Tennessee pretty boy the new faces of psychedelia? Who knows. Or, more accurately, who cares. Whether you call their irresistible dance/rock sound future '70s, psych rock, or synth glam, MGMT’s part sincere, part satirical mystic schtick is so effective that fans have literally kidnapped Ben to discuss spiritual missions. Meanwhile, others wonder if these guys are for real. Like, who wears capes while performing on David Letterman? (They did! It was awesome!) Is it all a big consipracy to mock or manipulate?

Um, no. “It’s fun when people over-analyze what we’re doing but we don’t put that kind of thought into it,” says Ben, a Sagittarius, in case you were wondering. “We’re not putting all these secret little mysteries in our music. All that stuff is grounded in something, but we're taking it to a very extreme level and putting stuff in there that kind of confuses things.”

Tell that to the character who apparently “abducted” Ben in Connecticut. (Andrew claims he had “really long fingers.”) And that’s just the beginning. “A guy came up to us the other day and asked if we were in the intelligentia,” says Andrew, an Aquarius. “And in Richmond, one woman was like, ‘Can I talk to you for a second,’ and she pulled me aside and said, ‘You know your mission, you know what you're supposed to be doing.’ It was really intense.

“And there was this other guy in Portland who was like, ‘I went to the top of a mountain,’” Ben adds.

“A Mayan temple,” Andrew interjects.

“Yeah!” says Ben. “He was like, ‘We’re on this quest together, your band and me.’”

“He gave me a crystal,” says Andrew, happily. “Sometimes.. you wish you weren’t talking to them for quite as long, but usually it’s really good.”

Ben and Andrew met, and began tinkering with electronic noise loops and weird performance art, while studying music at Wesleyan University in Connecticut. An indie label released their Time to Pretend EP, they graduated, Andrew had a crisis of sorts and moved to Brooklyn. Ben worked construction upstate before joining his bandmate in hipsterville. Then, poof, Columbia Records offered MGMT a multi-album deal, based upon their EP. Having been on hiatus for months, they submitted to the label a wish list of producers including Barack Obama. (I’m excited!) Despite what a psych professor might call their "attempt at self-sabotage motivated by insecurity," Columbia recruited Flaming Lips producer Dave Fridmann. The result was Oracular Spectacular.

From the synthy, classic rock-influenced “Kids" to the psychedelic disco of “Electric Feel,” and, of course, “Time To Pretend” -- a tongue-in-cheek pop song about the perils of celebrity, cocaine, and model wives that, irony of ironies, is the band’s biggest hit to date -- it's an amazing debut. Rolling Stone named MGMT one of 2008’s Artists to Watch, they opened for Radiohead, toured with Beck, even played at London’s Abbey Road studios, made famous by The Beatles.

Despite their college degrees and all this wacky psychedelic business, MGMT isn’t some smarter-than-thou, meanie band that snickers behind the backs of anyone who doesn’t get some inside joke. (And if they ever were, they’ve totally grown out of that phase.) Rather, they’re quite typical of smart, educated, creative types who grew up so entrenched in pop culture that playing around with its archetypes for amusement, and inevitably using these as a starting point for art, is as natural as bored Eskimos getting their rocks off by inventing all those fancy words for snow. And, as anyone who’s ever been jaded and twenty-something knows, fun trumps apathy.

As such, when they’re not touring the world and dancing around onstage to the delight of screaming fans, the MGMT fellows are fond of throwing impromptu dance parties in “jocky rock bars,” and generally “doing weird things in public and making fools out of ourselves. We have no shame,” says Ben.

“We don’t do things to get attention, but we like to amuse ourselves in public,” Andrew clarifies.

“We were just joking about that night when you and your friends figured it all out, but nobody was writing it down,” says Ben. “In high school,I had one of those cassette-tape dictaphone things and I used to bring it out to parties and just leave it on a table. I lost it somewhere, but I used to catch really good drunken monologues from people. I don’t know who they were talking to, but it was very insightful.”

"I think someone recognized me at the bar last night,” says Andrew. That was exciting.”

The Icelandic Invasion

Ok, so maybe this story I wrote for Zink magazine is about last year's festival but it was super fun with little Bjork people running around everywhere and crazy parties and sexy clean air.

THE ICELANDIC INVASION
It was definitely their first kiss, I could tell by the way she gasped, shocked and delighted, and how he touched her face. Meanwhile, onstage was hometown electro-pop band FM Belfast and twenty or so of their friends, dancing up a storm with various tambourines, cowbells, Casio synths, and a crowd-surfing dude in a bear suit. Sporting cardigans and bowties, the gleeful ensemble played hit after danceable hit. The crowd went wild, singing, jumping and grooving in sexy, hipster celebration. It was easy to forget that just days prior, this country’s economy had collapsed. Banks gone bankrupt. People’s savings lost. Yet when life makes no sense, what else is there to do but party? And, maybe, fight. Suddenly, a cherubic-looking blonde beside make-out couple started screaming at a fellow who was getting grabby. She shoved him hard, ready to throw down.

Luckily, he backed off, but the occasional close call is part of the fun of any music festival, and Iceland Airwaves -- though mostly about optimism, passion for music, and uplifting vibes as per above -- is no exception. Sponsored in part by Icelandair, the festival’s tenth edition attracted 4,500 music fans and industry members (forty percent from abroad) to Reykjavik, Iceland’s capital, for four days of shows and a conference.

Of 180 performances, about thirty were by international acts like CSS, Vampire Weekend, Yelle, Biffy Clyro, White Lies, Handsome Furs, Final Fantasy and more. Yet the festival’s highlights were its Icelandic artists, who ranged in style from indie rock to black metal, electro to folk. My favorite locals shows included: Hellvar, an adorable singer/songwriter who sounds like Björk, looks like Björk, but guess what, she’s not Björk! Reykjavík!, the metal band whose raging set in a horse stable was completely insane. Parachutes, whose cinematic soundscapes are reminiscent of Sigur Rós. Vicky, the almost all-girl metal band (drummer’s a dude) with mohawks as sharp as their songs. Gus Gus, hardly new, but their thumping electronic set got thousands dancing. Seabear, a folk-pop buzz band whose music you’ll soon hear on Gossip Girl.

I wondered what might link the scene’s diverse sounds. “One shared characteristic is playfulness,” said Iceland Music Export’s Anna Hildur. “The lack of thinking that you have to fit into a formula. This is liberating. It means people are doing things on their own terms.” Floating in the Atlantic (North West of the United Kingdom) Iceland’s isolation certainly breathes creative freedom into its musicians. However, it’s tough to build international audiences. “How can you compete when you live in a country with a population of 300,000,” said Ms. Hildur. “If an artist wants to go on tour, just the flight is a considerable cost.”

Reykjavik (pop 120,000) is a small, cute, super clean town of stylish shops, galleries, cafés, and street art. Rainbows appear overhead more often than some rockers change socks. The crisp air sometimes smells like sulphur due to hot geothermal seawater that flows from the taps. Folklore tells of elves and Vikings, and people are listed in the phone book by their first name. Yet Icelanders are hip. People I met were sophisticated, educated, and well-traveled, with an uncorrupted softness about them -- a directness in the way they speak and look you in the eye. Plus, they know how to dance.

Catching a dozen shows a night, I trotted between venues like the Reykjavik Art Museum, glitzy club Nasa, beautiful old theater Idno and crowded bars Tunglid and Organ. Everywhere, I kept seeing the same faces: Jónsi Birgisson of Sigur Rós hanging out quietly in various corners, his pixie-like face framed by a cap with ear flaps. Friendly blond Reykjavik! guitarist Haukur S. Magnússon (another Iceland Music Export employee) was another frequent sighting. Also, loads of gorgeous party kids: Italians, Germans, Brits, Danes. Coquettish girls with china doll faces, miniskirts rouged cheeks, and ropes of yellow hair. Skinny jeans and sunglasses everwhere, and haircuts you could slice sharkmeat with. With long lines outside every packed venue, inside, booze flowed like the waterfalls we visited on our day off. Pushing and shoving strangers was the new black. The scene on the street at 4, 5, even 6:00 a.m. was equally rowdy, but still safe to walk around -- one must make a late-night stop at the hot dog or waffle stand!

Or, hit an afterparty at the Kaffibarrin bar, where local label Bedroom Community throws parties. “So, how do you feel about all these people coming to your city?” I asked a cute boy with a soft, scruffy beard and clear blue eyes. “Oh, we love it, it’s fun and exciting compared to normal,” he enthused politely before downing his beer and whisking me off to the bar’s downstairs bathroom for a secret smoke. Hey, we all need some excitement, right? Certain Icelanders would agree.

“We are running down the street in our underwear,” sing FM Belfast in the hit song “Underwear.” “’Cause Nothing. Ever. Happens here. We come from a place where we count the days... ‘Till nothing. ‘Till nothing. Until nothing....” Truth is, I have no idea if they’re talking about being bored in Iceland or something else entirely. But something has happened, and what’s next is anybody’s guess. The bewildered sentiment of most locals as to the financial crisis seemed to be, “Holy crap!” “It’s a new reality to us,”said Ms. Hildur. “It’s difficult to understand what the consequences will be like...”