Pitchfork

Photos by William Kirk; Above: M.I.A.

M.I.A. [Terminal 5; 8 p.m.]

M.I.A. just keeps getting better and better. She owned Terminal 5, her megawatt personality ricocheting off of the brand new West Side venue's cavernous steel interior with as much force as her beats.

Accompanied by DJ Low Budget and sidekick Cherry-- and a hyperactive set of videos on a screen behind the stage-- M.I.A. played an hour-and-a-half set containing pretty much every good song she's ever recorded. And she somehow found time to mash-up New Order's "Blue Monday" with "Jimmy", "10 Dollar" with the Eurythmics' "Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)", and most thrillingly, "Galang" with Lil Mama's "Lip Gloss". The latter served as a reminder of how much the mainstream pop/dance/rap landscape has shifted since M.I.A. first appeared in 2004, and how much certain megahits have come to resemble her sound. (Fortunately, Fergie's "London Bridge" didn't make an appearance.)

The giddy highlight of the set occurred with "Bird Flu", when M.I.A. encouraged fans to join her on stage. Soon, she was surrounded by a large crowd of cool kids of all races and ethnic backgrounds boogieing to the stuttering beat. As the singer herself melted into the crowd, her voice just one among many shouting the lyrics, the spectacle became a kind of word-into-flesh enactment of the multi-culti vision M.I.A. preaches.

Bonus rock star sightings: Nick Zinner and Brian Chase of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs in the V.I.P. section-- Chase taking notes throughout M.I.A.'s performance! (What could he be studying?) Pavement's Mark Ibold on the street after the show checking out a bureau that someone had thrown in the trash!

MGMT [Crash Mansion; 12 a.m.]






Some might say MGMT are in the right place at the right time. Their debut album Oracular Spectacular (produced by Dave Fridmann) is out now on Columbia Records, they're on tour with Of Montreal, and their CMJ showcase was packed. They're officially a "buzz band."

But as I watched these guys play, I realized something: MGMT represent a whole lot about what is wrong with the music industry right now.

Let me back up a bit. In July, Pitchfork ran a news story about Of Montreal's fall tour. MGMT's publicist gave us an mp3 of the song "Time to Pretend" to include with the story. I fell for "Time to Pretend"-- it's got a nice loping beat, a sugary melody, and tongue-in-cheek lyrics that somehow don't come across as asinine. So far so good.

In September, I received a strange package via FedEx. It was the MGMT promo…on cassette. And a cassette player/recorder. Well, that's one way to avoid a leak. But is it really worth the amount of money it costs to FedEx a bulky tape recorder to who knows how many journalists?

A week later, the Pitchfork office received several copies of Oracular Spectacular, with no watermarks or security protection or anything. Guess they don't care about MGMT leaks so much after all.

"Time to Pretend" is by far the best song on Oracular Spectacular, though "Kids" isn't bad. And, um, that's about it. I'd tell you more about the other songs on it if I could remember any of them. There's a bit of typically hazy Fridmann psychedelics, some kinda trippy outer space stuff. Yet every time I put the damn thing on, the next thing I know the album's over and I didn't even realize I was listening to it.

But because "Time to Pretend" is so good, I decided to give MGMT a chance at CMJ. Maybe the live setting is where the magic really is, where I'd experience whatever it is that first captivated that key Columbia Records A&R person.

Well, you know what MGMT sound like live? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Their music and stage presence are so bland, we all might as well have been staring at a brick wall. This show happened a few hours ago, and I couldn't tell you what any of the band members look like, or hum anything they played. The crowd seemed just as bored as I was, bobbing up and down mildly, mostly text-messaging and checking their CMJ guides to see who else was playing nearby.

Admittedly, I left after four songs. I didn't even stick around for "Time to Pretend". Maybe the fifth song brought dancing girls, confetti, and a cover of "Paradise by the Dashboard Light" with a guest appearance by Meat Loaf himself.

I wish MGMT were actually bad. Like, super cheesy or technically inept or offensive or emotional trainwrecks. Or something. ANYTHING. Instead, they were just nothing.

I'm sorry to pick on MGMT; obviously I'm setting them up as a straw man. As my friends and co-workers know, I'm a pretty harsh music fan. (I mean, I don't even like In Rainbows that much.) And hey, at least MGMT have one good song, which is much more than I can say for most artists!

I'm also pretty bad at predicting the future. The last person I begged people to ignore was Amy Winehouse. Maybe MGMT will one day become the greatest band ever in the history of the universe, and they will magically convince the entire world that paying for music is awesome.

But for now, when the major label system is in its death throes, and yet labels are still throwing money away on inane promotional schemes for bands with no character, no following, and little potential, it's hard to have much sympathy.