Photos by Rich Orris
Here’s a few notes on the set gleaned from our Day One roundup:
Electro-psychedelic dork-rockers MGMT were best when playing their older tracks like “Time to Pretend,” “Electric Feel,” and “Destrokk.” Both Andrew VanWyngarden and Ben Goldwasser dropped their guitars and keyboard to prowl around the stage and harmonize during an inspired version of “Kids.”
The swirling pastel light show would have been completely transcendental if you were on acid. It was also pretty cool even if you weren’t tripping.
They lost a lot of their crowd as the set went on. The show was a bit mellow for a prime 9:30 time-slot and a lot of folks seemed like they’d rather be listening to something more danceable. At their best, MGMT came off like a modern day Pink Floyd; at their worst, and during a few of their newer tracks, they were like a boring and wimpy version of The Who.
They are not boring, you are boring.
this is beautiful
MGMT was terrible. Just plain bad. It was obvious that they resented playing the hits and there was no energy or inspiration, also very little interaction with the audience. Every song seemed like it was slowed down about 20 bpm to the point of being undanceable. They didn’t even play kids, just sung over a pre-recorded track, enjoyed inside jokes w/ one another and dicked around poorly on various instruments. Don’t ruin the good songs because you are to hip to play them right and please the audience. They should have been embarrassed to follow big boi. People entered the room and stayed there for big boi. After a few songs people were pouring out of the MGMT show. Listen, I was a fan, but that was a bad bad show.