I'm not really sure why or how MGMT's record label let them make their newest album. However, I'm incredibly pleased someone lost some paperwork in some office in Manhattan and this album got made. I'm not going to lie. I was unimpressed, rather dissapointed, and sleepy after the first few listens. Now I'm in love. Before you download you have to promise to give it at least three tries; a few rinses to get the old MGMT out of your brain.
Oracular Spectacular was admittedly somewhat of an LSD addled joke that went to far. MGMT had made it as a kind of last-off from their senior year at Wesleyan. Half a project to push the bounds of how poppy they could make music without hating themselves and half a desire to soundtrack their hallucinations, Oracular Spectacular surprisingly produced hit after hit with the likes of 'Kids' and 'Time to Pretend'. The band has even discussed how most of the lyrics are nonsensical. In retrospect, the now three year old album, really just had a lot of soul and no brain. If perhaps slightly erring in the other direction , MGMT sought to fix that on Congratulations.
With Congratulations MGMT has really completed a complete album, something I'm beginning to miss more and more in the iTunes download the three best singles era. Every song is un-skippable, you want to start at the beginning and play through in order each time. I've racked upwards of 25 listens in the week I've had the album. The opener, "it's working' introduces to the new, distilled MGMT. Echo-drenched, strangely both modernly produced and nostalgically 80's psychedelic sounding. The overall theme of the album is most obvious in the titling of 'Song for Dan Treacy' and 'Brian Eno'. Two British rock/pop artists who somehow managed to escape their initially superstar facades of fame and continue to almost secretly make music and influence rock but from behind the scenes. The lyrics almost seem to long for their fame to subside so they too can join the ranks of Eno and Treacy. It makes for an interesting interplay between trying to make highly conceptualized music and working against their inherent abilities to write very catchy hooks. "Flash Delirium' leans to the latter more than any song on the album yet still works against trying to make a flute, melodica, and electric organ poppy. 'Siberian Breaks' is lush and ambient as some obvious Eno influences shine through. Still, they manage to make the 12 minute song accessible and epic.
Congratulations is out 4/13
or right now from this .torrent link
OH, and they will be playing Yale Spring Fling.
here are some singles to peruse, bet seriously, get the whole album.