MGMT – Time to Pretend

Tarbox Road, 2007: ABBA tempo, Columbia debut

On 3 March 2008, MGMT released Time to Pretend as the lead single from Oracular Spectacular, their first major-label album. Andrew VanWyngarden and Ben Goldwasser had written an earlier version for their 2005 Time to Pretend EP while still known around Wesleyan as The Management. Columbia pushed them to keep the song on the full-length. They re-recorded it in spring 2007 with Dave Fridmann at Tarbox Road Studios in Cassadaga, New York, with further work at Context in Brooklyn. Fridmann produced, engineered and mixed; Greg Calbi mastered.

What you hear is a steady dance pulse and bright synth lines that Fridmann pushed harder with compression and distortion than the EP take. Fridmann suggested a slight tempo bump; the duo aimed for the exact pace of ABBA’s Dancing Queen. VanWyngarden sings about moving to Paris, models, offices and the morning commute as a joke that still lands as a career warning. Fridmann even plays a Thingamagoop, a light-sensitive gadget, for ascending squeals on the track. Live drums replace some of the older machine feel.

The album arrived digitally on 2 October 2007 via RED Ink, then physically through Columbia on 22 January 2008. Time to Pretend opened the record as a mission statement before Electric Feel and Kids. Ray Tintori directed the video. NME later named Oracular Spectacular album of the year; Rolling Stone placed both song and album on decade lists. The college EP idea survives, but the Fridmann mix is the version that hit festivals and radio.