Fated to Dance

Kids do grow up.

But for a solid 3 hours in the vast Suntec International Convention & Exhibition hall, the twenty-something hipster crowd was gyrating and dancing to the psychedelic pop-rock tunes of MGMT, the American indie band no longer fated to pretend its indie roots but have since embraced the excess of mainstream success.

Likewise for the yuppie audience – a good mix of about 3,000 locals and expats – grooving along in the hall, as if still stuck in lost youth days spent in a gig at a Brooklyn warehouse. Evidently, they had forgotten the monotony of their morning commute and decided to let down their hair at the gig. And boy it was fun.

This is our decision, to live fast and die young.
We’ve got the vision, now let’s have some fun.
– ‘Time to Pretend’

During MGMT’s 90-minute set which lasted little past midnight, frontman and guitarist Andrew VanWyngarden, co-founder and keyboardist Benjamin Goldwasser and the rest of the band wowed the crowd with hits from their debut album Oracular Spectacular and sophomore effort Congratulations.

From the get-go, the massive hit ‘Time to Pretend’ had the audience shaking and moving the floorboards to its heavy synthesiser sound followed by favourites like ‘Electric Feel’ and ‘Kids’, the latter a popular Grammy-nominated tune heard on TV shows such as Gossip Girl and The Vampire Diaries.

However, at times, the atmosphere lulled and became somewhat muted when the band played songs from the second album such as ‘Brian Eno’, ‘Siberian Breaks‘ and ‘Flash Delirium’, an indication of perhaps less flashier songs and unfamiliar territory. Even VanWyngarden had to introduce ‘Siberian Breaks’ to the crowd, his favourite song on Congratulations.

Perhaps the long waiting time got the crowd a little weary, with not one but two opening acts – local electronic set MUON and German-Norwegiann band The Whitest Boy Alive. The latter appeared onstage at only about 9pm and got the crowd jiving wildly, celebrating lead singer Erlend Oye’s crazy stage antics. Oye is not a stranger to the music-going crowd, who already witnessed his stage presence in his other band, Kings of Convenience. The Whitest Boy Alive had faints of Kings of Convenience’s folk-pop, but with much more funk and trippy parts.

By the time MGMT came on at 1030pm, fans were clamouring and baying for blood (we exaggerate) on the dance floor. And VanWyngarden sang his heart out in his signature falsetto, who was “thankful for being able to play in front of the fans”. Never mind the shoddy acoustics which sometimes made it hard to make sense of some of the songs, the fans wanted more and the band duly delivered, playing the bittersweet ‘Someone’s Missing’ during the encore.

As the title of the second album suggests, the band simply wants the fans’ congratulations despite its meteoric rise and ensuing brickbats about the band selling out and going commercial.

And the cheers and applause deservedly ruptured from the fans at the end of a long night.

Pictures courtesy of Zhi Wei, Actually Mag.

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