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MGMT- The New Era of Psychedelic Pop
Author: Shira Karsen
MGMT (previously known as) The Management, have been around since 2002 when Ben Goldwasser and Andrew VanWyngarden, two neo-hippies from Wesleyan University, decided to form a band— but only recently have they been put on the indie rock radar. Read the rest of this entry »
read comments (0)Steel Train
Author: Shira Karsen
In the basement of some suburban house in Princeton, New Jersey, four lanky and teen angsty men formed a band. Yes, this does seem incredibly cliché, but Steel Train, a band that easily defies every my-life-sucks-basement-band faux-pas is worth spending time listening to. Their quirky beats and melodramatic harmonies are reflective of their lead singer Jack Antonoff’s story, in which he fell into a deep depression after his sister died, his cousin died in Iraq and he broke up with his long-term girlfriend.
Their sound is like The Killers meets Ben Folds, if they were married and had the psychedelic folk of Joan Jett and the morbid lyrics of death cab as their in laws. Cutting, blatant lyrics from Antoff’s personal experiences are contradicted by electrifying piano pop and upbeat vocals.
Their latest album, Trampoline, which debuted in December of 2007, is like a therapy session strung over tunes of instrumental funk and jaunty anger. The first song “I feel weird” starts off telling his basic story: “ When I was 18/ everything was alive/ then the planes hit the towers/ then she died/ then he died/ a part of me disappeared/ six feet in the ground…./ a fire burns and it’s mine/.
In “Kill monsters in the rain,” lyrics like “together we can/ together we’ll kill monsters in the rain” harmonize over Ben Folds-esque keyboard’s. And the fun 80’s intro reminiscent of journey in “Alone On the Sea,” give this album it’s lighter side— the therapy sessions where time has passed and they’ve found something else to talk about.
This band should without a doubt be on our watch list. They were on tour this past summer, playing with O.A.R, performing at Bonarro in June and Lollapalooza in August, and are now performing all over the U.S.