MGMT: This funny, sad, sunny day

All my life, “post-apocalyptic” has been a phrase used to describe the alarming future. After a bomb, most likely, we’d be eating mystery meat from cans and wearing aluminum shoulderpads and big hair. We’d be simultaneously grubby and overly made-up. And our innate savage nature would prevail.

But what if the apocalypse has already been and gone? What if we were it? The music of MGMT, a Brooklyn, New York-based electronic-pop band, perfectly captures the feel of waking up outside, mildly hungover, and realizing that the awesome party the night before had actually been the end of the world.

Yes, the music admits, there were things that we wish we’d done, before it all went boom. But supposing it’s better this way? After all, this crazy new landscape holds its own adventures. At the very least, it offers a bittersweet freedom, the chance to use this wreckage to serve the great god Fun.

Our culture’s spent the past eight or nine years perfecting its implosion, and can now collapse on itself with astonishing efficiency. MGMT suggests a bright side: our rules hold as much sway now, as do the ones that reduced our future to rubble. Clothe yourself in what you wish, and dance.

Eventually, one gets used to the dark undercurrent weaving its way through these crazy times.

City’s gone? Let’s go find a beach.

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