Interpol - Untitled

Night Shot

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It’s San Francisco in 1966 and we’re lying in the long grass overlooking the bay realising that life might never get better than this. Same year, different location. We’re walking down St. Mark’s Place in New York towards the Dom, where the Velvet Underground are performing this very evening. Post-punk London: pop possibilities, psychedelic outcomes, unsteady futures. Connecticut 2004, a collegiate idyll and meeting point for Andrew VanWyngarden and Benjamin Goldwasser whose primordial wigouts are released under the name MGMT.

Lysergic mgmt diethylamide: this music is for those who know their Orange Sunshine from their Windowpane. Drenched in pop as much as psychedelia, they don’t need a map and compass to find the tunes. MGMT formed at Wesleyan University in Connecticut and after some indie activity soon caught the attention of Columbia who have so far released the first two albums, the aptly-named Oracular Spectacular and Congratulations. There have been Grammy nominations (and even a Grammy win for Justice’s remix of ‘’Electric Feel’), though these are mere fripperies in the face of Owsley Stanley and his pals.

Although their sound has morphed considerably over the first two LPs, their attitude has not. In ‘Song For Dan Treacy’, they show their affection for a certain type of British songwriter (Treacy’s band TV Personalities are included here), while Congratulations’ producer Peter Kember is a former member of the Spacemen 3, the best psychedelic band ever to come from Rugby – who also figure on this very compilation with the delightful ‘Lord Can You Hear Me’.

They are firstly fans of other people’s records, those MGMT boys. You can tell by the impressive depth of their selections and by how sympathetic this music sounds when blended together. We can’t overlook the tremendous contributions of the English psych aristocracy hereabouts. There is the Droolian himself Julian Cope whose song, ‘Laughing Boy’, is taken from his finest hour Fried. Then there’s the unbearably cultish Felt, featuring the wonderful Lawrence Hayward, with ‘Red Indians’ and Vini Reilly (aka Durutti Column) with the slinky ‘For Belgian Friends’. If Syd Barrett, Kevin Ayers and the Singing Policeman had been present, the eccentrics of Great Britain Society would have had a quorum.

But that is not all. Oh no. That is not all… There’s the other side of the pond, too. The Grace Slick-led Great Society’s ‘Love You Girl’ and Suicide’s Martin Rev who weighs in with the magnificently batty ‘Sparks’ from 2000’s Strangeworld. But then, just when you think you’ve get them all figured they go and throw rockabilly hero Charlie Feathers into the ring. To top it all, there’s also their reading of Bauhaus’ uncharacteristically beautiful ‘All We Ever Wanted Was Everything’ for our now traditional Late night Tales cover version. TKO MGMT.

Gently remove your I Was Lord Kitchener’s Valet army uniform. Take a sip of green tea, lie back on the chaise longue and wait for the magic carpet to arrive. Let’s take a trip.

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MGMT - All We Ever Wanted Was Everything [Bauhaus Cover] (Late Night Tales: MGMT)

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