Friday 28 November 2008

MGMT – Barrowlands, Glasgow – 9th November 2008

I know I’m a little late in writing up this one but I just couldn’t make up my mind about this gig.

Back in July I managed to see 10 minutes of MGMT’s set in the Pet Sound Arena at T in the Park and thought they looked and sounded great and I absolutely love their fantastic debut album, Oracular Spectacular.

The young psychedelic-pop outfit from Brooklyn’ took to the stage looking like a proper indie-rock band rather than the war-painted kids playing dress up that we’re used to, I was a little disappointed.

To start off with their performance was a bit uninspiring and tame; I kept waiting for them to put their all into it, even faced with an excitable young audience it felt like they were still holding back.

They have a habit of turning their back on the crowd and doing their own thing whether it’s an impromptu keyboard jam or twiddling knobs it felt a bit like I was in the rehearsal room instead of the actual gig.

However, when they unleashed the fantastic, Time to Pretend, and gave the instruction "now let's have some fun" it felt as though they had finally made that gear change and the Glasgow crowd exploded, the whole place was jumping, with a little help from the Ballrooms sprung floor.

They managed to keep up the momentum for the infectious track that is pure pop-gold, Electric Feel. They played a couple of their new tracks before doing a great performance of The Handshake.

The band went off before delivering a magnificent performance of new single, Kids, which stirred the enthusiastic crowd once more.

The gig definitely had its peaks and troughs, more peaks than troughs, thankfully. However it was really frustrating because when these guys are good their on fire but when their bad their fiddling and annoying.

Starlet

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