AMERICAN psychedelic-pop band MGMT hit the international stage after their debut album Oracular Spectacular in 2007.
Now with three albums under their belt – Congratulations in 2010 and self-titled MGMT released this year, the band are preparing for their visually stunning set at Southbound Festival in the early new year.
Founding member and multi-talented vocalist, guitarist and keyboard player Benjamin Goldwasser spoke with the Mail’s entertainment reporter, Tasha Campbell, about how the band is looking forward to visiting Western Australia for the annual festival.
Will this be your first trip to Busselton in Western Australia?
I believe so yeah, we've only been to Byron Bay before so we're really excited to come down; it should be a good time. It will be nice for us to get a little warm weather too, it will be great.
Being your first time to play Southbound festival – what are you looking forward to the most?
Everything I’ve heard about the festival. It sounds like it’s a really good airing for what we do with our live shows and I have a good feeling about it.
Do you prefer playing festivals or sideshows?
It’s nice to have a mixture – we’ve been doing a lot of our own shows over the last couple of months but we started out this year doing mostly festivals so we’ve had a pretty good taste of both. We feel confident enough with the show that I think it’s going to be really fun to do festivals, although I think sometimes that festivals can be a little stressful for us when we’re having technical difficulties and when people are expecting a spectacle that’s seamless. But we can’t wait to come over.
Do you have a favourite album to play out of your three?
The new one because it’s the best we’ve been able to represent ourselves and we had a really good time making it and I think we really put in as much work as we needed to make it the way we wanted to. It still does something to me when I go back and listen to it – I still find new things in it, which is the first time that has really happened. I think in the past when we have made music we’re ready to just be done with it and once we’ve finished it we don’t really want to hear it anymore.
What do you think has changed across them?
I think we’ve always been trying new things and I think in a lot of ways we are the same people but we now have more perspective and I think when I go back and listen to some of the earlier stuff we’ve done I can hear how we were trying to do something that didn’t quite get there and I’ll always hear things that I would have done differently. I’m sure it will be the same when I go back in a few years and listen to this album but we just keep growing, however I do still like our old music.
What can the Southbound crowds expect from MGMT?
It’s a really cool show these days – it’s just musically really tight and we’re having a lot of fun on stage and we’ve been playing with the same musicians for a long time now so we’re feeling each other really well and we have a really good visual show. Our friend Ella is doing our live projections behind us so she performs it live with the music in response to what we’re doing and there’s a lot of interactive stuff going on so it’s pretty neat.
What is the most rewarding thing about being an artist?
The fact that we get to play so much music and second to that would be getting to do a lot of travel. But if I had any other job I would still be wishing I had more time to play music – wait, I still wish I had more time to play music now.
