Viernes 12 Dic 2008, 1:13
Thu 11 Dec – MGMT, Tame Impala, Luke Steele
A sunny summer evening was the perfect setting for New York’s ridiculously popular synth-pop whizkids MGMT to bring their live show to Australia. Recapping, the band sold out the original venue of the Palace Theatre in under five minutes, then when the show was moved to Festival Hall, they instantly sold out that as well. Suffice to say, expectations were high for the band to deliver tonight.
The night got off to a rocking start with Perth it-kids Tame Impala bringing their fuzzed-out brand of blissful psychedelic rock to the Festival Hall stage. Not too familiar with their work, so I guess this little bit is going to be brief, but yeah, I thought their set was great. From memory I think they only managed to fit in about five-six songs, due to the fact that they were all for a bit of free-form jamming in the middle of their songs. A bit of artiness always goes down well with me; I was particularly impressed with their drummer Jay Watson. Their session second guitarist/tambourine player got a few smiles when he came off the stage to pass around a bowl of some sort of food to the front row – not sure what it was; it was empty by the time it got to me. A rendition of the one tune of theirs I know, Desire Be Desire Go brought an excellent opening set to a close. One to watch in the future, this band.
Up next was Luke Steele, familiar to most as the kooky vocalist from The Sleepy Jackson and more recently, Empire of the Sun. Uh, familiar? Scratch that. For a wild moment there, I thought maybe they’d just billed him as Luke Steele because that’d be more well-known, and maybe it would actually be Empire of the Sun, but no. So when it became apparent that it would be just Luke in solo mode, I was a tad disappointed. Steele was onstage strumming away on an acoustic guitar to some pre-recorded beats and effects, none of which added up to familiar songs, for me at least. And I’m not sure whether it had an effect on it or him trying to be his usual oddball self, but either way, I didn’t much care for his vocals. Definitely would’ve been better with Nick Littlemore up onstage with him.
The excitement reached fever pitch when the full five-piece live incarnation of MGMT hit the stage just after 10pm. After a bit of arty experimentalism (there was plenty of that about in the show), the crowd cheered when the band broke into Of Moons Birds & Monsters, in all its wacky glory. I’d heard mixed reviews of MGMT live and was thus a little apprehensive tonight, but after just a few minutes staring slack-jawed at the Festival Hall stage, I had to wonder whether anyone submitting a negative live review of this band had subsequently been admitted to a mental institution. This wasn’t a band just rocking up onstage half-drunk or whatever and robotically moving through their back catalogue – this was what a full live show should be. A fantastic light show and psychedelic visuals up the back complemented the wild psychedelic noise emanating from MGMT mainstays Andrew VanWyngarden (vocals/guitar) and Ben Goldwasser (vocals/synths), and their live team comprising James Richardson (second guitar/synths), Matthew Asti (bass) and Will Berman (drums). Though it must be said, Festival Hall was really a bad choice for an MGMT show – they might’ve needed it to accommodate the demand, but some of the band’s more intense sonic explorations were transformed into a wall of noise by the old venue. At the centre of it all was vocalist-guitarist Andrew VanWyngarden, looking a little bit bemused at the rapturous response the crowd was giving his band. “Wow…” he mumbled, looking out over the crowd. “There’s people over there… and people over there,” as he pointed to the various sections of Festival Hall. The band didn’t leave many to complain about the setlist, as they managed to squeeze in all of Oracular Spectacular – deafening cheers were reserved for tracks like Weekend Wars and Time to Pretend with the crowd dancing and singing in earnest. Hardcore fans may have walked away a little disappointed – the band didn’t play anything off the Time to Pretend EP, but made up for it in my opinion with an amazing jam-drive piece entitled Metanoia, which stretched well past the ten-minute mark and left a lot of people scratching their heads as to where it had come from. But I have to give the band credit for playing it; it sounded amazing live. I think in concert is where you find out what kind of band MGMT really are – and to me, the live show transforms that brilliant album into something even more amazing. A surprisingly better-sounding live version of Electric Feel (I’m very much over the song and would even go as far as to say it’s my least favourite MGMT song) and The Handshake wrapped up the main set, but everyone knew there was still one more song the band hadn’t played. The feedback and continuing drone from the band’s instruments never stopped, and then a familiar pulsing rhythm crept into the background, and the band returned to deliver an absolutely storming version of Kids – the main beats and synth lines were mostly on loop, allowing VanWyngarden and Goldwasser to enthusiastically deliver the song together on just microphones from the front of stage, while the other band members kept the noise jams and sonic exploration going. And then, it was all over. The sold-out crowd of Festival Hall didn’t bother demanding any more, as MGMT had already delivered on all fronts. After a night full of hand-waving, singing and dancing, the crowd left very satisfied. A class act, for sure.
Setlist:
Of Moons Birds & Monsters
Future Reflections
4th Dimensional Transition
Pieces of What
Weekend Wars
The Youth
Time to Pretend
Metanoia
Electric Feel
The Handshake
—Encore—
Kids