Concert review: MGMT @ Merriweather Post Pavilion

Midnight Sun correspondent Evan Haga saw MGMT at Merriweather Post Pavilion Saturday. Here is his review:

MGMT, a psychedelic quintet whose founders and leaders — vocalist/guitarist Andrew VanWyngarden and keyboardist Ben Goldwasser — are precocious, sometimes brilliant pop craftsmen, offered one of their biggest hits on Saturday night in a way that might be termed an "anti-performance."

To its pre-recorded synthesizer track, the two men sang "Kids" and danced modestly while the rest of the band loitered, nodded along or tooled around on their instruments. (At one point a bra was thrown onstage from the audience and tossed around until VanWyngarden put it on.)

The decision to go karaoke could have been interpreted a couple different ways, depending on what music blogs you read and how much of them you choose to believe. On one level it was an exercise in group catharsis; a way to get the players out from behind their instruments, get loose and enjoy a big falsetto hum-along with the large amphitheater crowd. In a different way it seemed to mock the song and deliver it as an afterthought; a kiss-off to a pop single from a band with much bigger ambitions, perhaps? ...

Gossip can be fun, but let's go with the former: The other party-starting early singles, "Time to Pretend" and "Electric Feel," were given the full-band treatment, and, actually, this has long been the band’s standard live delivery for "Kids." Still, the song deserved a little more elbow grease. After all, they care enough about the Grammy-nominated track to

for misusing it, and it surely helped them garner a fan base large enough to fill out a respectable portion of Merriweather.

The crowd was enviable for any working band, especially one with only two full-length albums to its credit: mostly college-aged or slightly older; loyal enough to adopt a neo-hippie-meets-hipster dress code that revolves around a headband or bandanna — a look the band invented but didn't adhere to. And the loyalty didn't stop there.

Danceable synth-pop may have been MGMT's bread and butter early on, but those singles are actually aberrations at this point. The majority of the band's two Columbia-label LPs consists of formally involved yet impressively tuneful psychedelic rock that seems equally indebted to '60s British Invasion and California pop and to the more recent bands — the Flaming Lips, Spacemen 3 — who've worshiped similar gods. Both of MGMT's offerings are exemplars of songwriting, baroque arrangement and expansive sonics — the sort of front-to-back listens worth a turntable and a nice set of headphones, and an argument for major labels giving promising young people some coin without micromanaging them.

VanWyngarden, Goldwasser, drummer Will Berman, bassist Matthew Asti and guitarist/keyboardist James Richardson mostly stayed put without props or gimmicks — the Lips live this was not. Aside from some guitar heroics courtesy of Richardson, the most Woodstock-looking of the bunch, or a few words of thanks from VanWyngarden, the majority of this gig presented the sort of parlor game the Beatles tribute band the Fab Faux has made a go of: That is, where are those sounds on the record coming from? Ah, that's a synth handling the koto-like timbres on "Congratulations"; oh, that's a real electric sitar on "Someone's Missing."

On more complexly structured songs like the epic "Siberian Breaks"; "It's Working," which resembled sunshine pop as interpreted by Air; or "Flash Delirium," the precision and execution were imposing. "Destrokk," an older song, was a decidedly contemporary-sounding rocker and an overall highlight. Less thrilling were VanWyngarden's vocals, even as the group nailed surf-rock harmonies, and even if certain vocal moments — say, the squeezed tenor the singer fell into on slower numbers like "I Found a Whistle" and "Pieces of What" — were winning.

This material doesn't call for a vocalist of any real power or singularity, but VanWyngarden had trouble projecting and some general pitch problems — most obvious in Prince-falsetto mode, as on "Electric Feel." Not that it mattered much to the fans, who ate the show up in its entirety, far beyond the spare synth-pop moments, and even when it resembled some esoteric meld of the Mamas & the Papas and Spiritualized.

Opening act Devendra Banhart's set worked in an opposing fashion. If you hadn't kept up with him, you might've expected a Norcal freak-folkie looking Jesus-chic and playing through composed acoustic rambles. Instead, Banhart wore very short hair and danced as if on the verge of a bathroom break. His band — a jaunty, taut guitar-rock five-piece — and vocals — a sly croon that suggested Lou Reed with a voice coach — called forth the Lower East Side of mid-'70s Manhattan.

(Handout photos)