“Loss Of Life” (Mom+Pop/Popstock!, 24) is the fifth full-length by Ben Goldwasser and Andrew VanWyngarden, that is MGMT. To chat with them about her world and about this new album we have invited Cristina Plaza, vocalist of Clovis and Los Eterno, as well as a solo artist under the name Daga Voladora.
How little is left until the album comes out. Are you nervous or rather bored already?
(Ben Goldwasser) Boring, I assure you, not. We have been preparing a lot of videos. Plus, I feel like I’m doing more interviews than ever. But maybe it’s because we are untrained.
Let’s start at the end: the title song of the album, “Loss Of Life”, appears divided into two parts: one placed at the end of the album and the continuation (“Loss Of Life part 2”) at the beginning. Where does this idea come from?
(Andrew VanWyngarden) Initially, we played the second part to open because we thought it was a little absurd. Now we have realized that it is quite consistent with the theme of the album: every ending is also a beginning. It’s cyclical, so putting that second part to start the album would highlight that idea.
“We try not to take ourselves too seriously”
It has a quite striking phrase: “When the day is born and life ends.”
(Andrew) When you have a child, there is a paradox that you bring a new life into the world and to raise, care for and give them all the love you want, you have to accept that your previous life is ending, and your old “self”, too. .
(Ben) One of the themes we explore on this album is the idea of accepting the fact that the world is always ending, and it’s not that you have to be okay with it, or be happy about it, but understanding that you can be happy and find reasons to keep going, even though you are aware that what is happening in the world can be horrible.
In “Nothing Changes” the myth of Sisyphus appears, this man condemned by the gods to climb a hill carrying a stone…
(Andrew) …and the stone keeps rolling down the hill and he has to go up again.
The lyrics say “leave the stone aside.”
(Andrew) It’s a rather Zen idea. There will always be conflict, pain… if you want it. It’s a question of perspective. You can feel that kind of constant existential despair, or you can be the rock in the current and instead of resisting, let things happen. The idea is not to become a passive being, with no desire to live, but to find the balance that you are supposed to achieve as a person and that is so difficult to achieve.
Musically, this song takes me back to Bowie in the seventies. There is something half British in your music and I don’t really know what it is.
(Ben) For this album we decided to listen to more American alternative groups, but in general we feel more affinity for English groups. Maybe it has to do with sarcasm, that sense of humor that is so personal, swearing…
(Andrew) …find the humor in the absurd…
(Ben) … we like to use all that in the songs; We’re serious people and we write songs about real things, but at the same time we try not to take ourselves too seriously.
And have you ever had the feeling that, because of that attitude, your music was taken less seriously?
(Andrew) I don’t know. I think that may be more because we are vague, even cryptic in the lyrics. Some people find it difficult to feel involved in our jokes. Does that perhaps restrict access…? I don’t know.
Sometimes it seems that you have to give yourself a lot of importance to be valued.
(Andrew) Self-aggrandizement makes us uncomfortable. In this world where everything is marketing, we are aware that we are not doing enough to reach more people, but the thing is… We can’t handle that. We don’t want to do it.
That’s another: if you don’t do everything possible to gain more audiences or make more money, then you’re stupid, or you’re crazy…
(Ben) We had to suffer that when “Congratulations” came out: we were very happy with what we had done and suddenly they began to tell us that we were sabotaging our career, that it was suicide… There were even people who thought “they were wrong.” gone hand in hand with drugs.” It was difficult for them to understand that that album was the result of a period of great concentration and creativity, and that there was an intention to move away from our debut. There were a lot of people very angry because there weren’t more songs like “Time To Pretend” or “Electric Feel”.
(Andrew) To be honest, there was a reaction… You know when a squid spits out ink? I’m not saying that we wanted to commit artistic suicide, but we did want to make sure that things weren’t going to get out of hand. We didn’t want to be Justin Bieber; We couldn’t either, but mmmh… There was a… it was like… “No, no; Let no one make a mistake.”
“The only times we’ve really fought have been after finishing mixing a record.”
You also have some musical genre. I already thought about it with “Alien Days”, and here with “Dancing In Babylon”.
(Andrew) I think we both like bands that play with a cinematic component. I think that, more on this album than on previous ones, we have created micro-worlds that can stand on their own. There are songs whose dynamic arc turns them almost into small stories.
(Ben) In my case I have probably spent more time watching movies than listening to music lately, and during the pandemic I got a little into the world of musicals because I have never really understood what all that exaggerated and somewhat cheesy stuff was about…
I hope I haven’t offended you with this comment…
(Ben) No, not at all! It’s just that I didn’t grow up watching or listening to musicals, until something clicked and now I’m able to understand it a little better.
(Andrew) It is indisputable that when we name the themes on this album – “the cycles of life”, “the importance of love” – they seem almost taken from the plot of a Disney fantasy… [risas]
There’s a huge amount of work that goes into this album. What would you say was the easiest or most enjoyable part?
(Ben) Something very important for this album was that we managed to create a community atmosphere: there were always people passing by the studio, they stayed to eat, and the music that came out was a product of hanging out together, more than a task. that we were obliged to do.
(Andrew) Yes, all the collaborations: from writing to Britta [Phillips; de Luna] to see if he would sing on “Phradie’s Song,” and that he would do it the next day. Same with Yuka Honda [Cibo Matto]which was brought to Nels Cline [Wilco] and we put him in the studio to mess around with the guitars. No pressure, no egos. No one was worried about how his contributions would be used later. They all have that friendly nature, and I love them.
And the hardest part?
(Andrew) I would say before we knew what the album was going to be like, when we were experimenting and putting ideas together. Ben and I are in very different moments in life, part of the theme of the album, especially in a song like “Mother Nature”, is about the two of us. We have very different personalities and we always have to reconfigure everything, get closer to each other. That always costs us.
But you seem to get along well. And they have been together for almost twenty years.
(Ben) The only times we have really fought have been after finishing mixing a record, over certain details that from the outside could have seemed silly. And on tour. We’ve always known that going on tour was hard for both of us because we’re not cut out for it. It’s not that we’re not going to tour anymore, but we come from a situation of forced paralysis due to the whole Covid issue, and we have led a much more homely life. And we want to stay that way. We are best friends and we are capable of being happy making music, focused on the creative part.
“We are rediscovering what it was that made us get together and start playing”
The first time you played in Madrid, in 2008, Clovis – my group at the time – was your opening act and I remember a tremendous expectation to see you, truly crazy. Do you miss anything from those early years?
(Ben) I wouldn’t say “miss”, but I would have liked to enjoy it more. It was a very fun but very stressful time.
How do you think Beyoncé or Taylor Swift hold up on those endless tours? Is it just for the money? Are they stage junkies?
(Andrew) They love performing, and getting on stage and being in front of people.
(Ben) Think Mick Jagger, or Paul McCartney: at this point, it can’t be about the money. No joke.
May I ask what the “bitter tea that allows no hiding” in “Mother Nature” is?
(Andrew) It symbolizes facing the truth. It’s the same idea as in “Bubblegum Dog.” It doesn’t matter what means you use to reach that point: whether it is with drugs or from your life experience. It is both psychedelic and existential; There is no way to escape the truth.
And the voiceovers heard in “Loss Of Life part 2”?
(Ben) It’s an old poem from the 13th century. A friend’s father is an English professor and he had recordings of him reading with that incredible voice of his. He sent us some things and this poem [“I Am Taliesin”] It fit perfectly, and the theme is totally in line with the album, so it was perfect.
My favorite songs are the least predictable, those in which you don’t always choose the most obvious chords. I’m thinking “I Whish I Was Joking.”
(Andrew) Right in that song, not even we – who have musical studies – are able to identify the chords of the verse. They come from a synthesizer with assigned notes. We tried to get an idea of what it could be like, we added some bass and piano parts that go together well, but if you sit down and try to get that chord out… We have no idea what the extensions were. And that in the chorus are the most normal chords in the world.
I also mean all those different parts with incredible and unexpected arrangements and yet they flow naturally. Do you look for these changes intentionally or do they come out that way?
(Ben) On “Congratulations” (and on “MGMT” too) we were really trying to make the weirdest chord progressions we could think of. Even in some songs on the first album we set it as a personal challenge. And I think we have left a little of that behind. Even now, when we try to write something simpler or more “conventional”, there are things that are not conventional at all, but sound normal to us.
(Andrew) And there’s a mutual desire to make pop music, I think. It’s about finding a middle ground: knowing that we are going along a line in which one can challenge oneself and do strange things, but one also has to be true to oneself and to that most popist part. We try to ensure that all these facets coexist in harmony.
Among the hard core of your fans there is some concern that this could be your last album together. It is?
(Ben) Absolutely not. We have the feeling that this album is a new beginning, in many ways. We’re rediscovering what made us get together and start playing in the first place, so I think we still have a lot to offer.