review of MGMT: Congratulations

After MGMT’s first album I felt a real sadness that their hipster popularity would dumb down the talent I felt they had let shine in a few of their songs on ORACULAR SPECTACULAR. I must have played ‘Electric Feel’ a few thousand times. As a whole album I felt SPECTACULAR was a bit lacking. Luckily I am proven wrong as MGMT take some of those incredible spells and stretch it across the entire length of an album, the magic is CONGRATULATIONS due out in April.

Often referring to Led Zeppelin as an example of who they’d like to be musically in interviews MGMT really seem to have been feeding off their idols. Cannibalizing off of an era just before Zeppelin’s time they seem to have come up with something entirely their own. One can’t help but to hear early Kinks, Animals, Rolling Stones and others in Congratulations.

The first track 'It’s Working' seems to play off of self doubt and the thrill the band felt after their meteoric rise to popularity. While I got a sense of the Stone Roses from it, more early-mid 60s Brit rock came through. ‘Song for Dan Treacy’ continues the boppy 60s synth and references a member from the band Television Personalities who had, “an obsession with youth culture of the 60s, a fey, slightly camp lyrical attitude, and the occasional classic pop song.” from Wikipedia. This I think sums up MGMT perfectly as well.

In interviews about this album MGMT often touched on their desire to create a total piece, that they didn’t wish to do singles and cut out chunks from the album. I have for a very long time felt this was an incredible way to write music and seems to produce a much more epic experience for the listener. ‘Flash Delirium’ the unwanted “single” seems very much in the vein of Bowie’s work with a punk flourish at the end. My favorite song from the whole has an eerie theremin squeal behind the singing of “I found a whistle/ That works every time.” If only we all had such an assiduous totem.

With a hippie almost folkish vibe ‘Siberian Breaks’ invocates the Byrds churchlike chants. In their lyrics I really enjoy the play with childlike observations juxtaposed with what seems to be a studied matured voice. It is odd because one instant the words are irreverent, asinine and seem to be making a joke; then one beat later carry a weight that seems aged and tired beyond its years. It is a strange mix.

In another homage to their beloved’s the song ‘Brian Eno’ ties the founder of ambient music together with a strange paranoia MGMT seems to have over him, they cry “What does he know?” over and over. They seem, as they say in the lyrics, to be forever a step behind their gods. The album’s title track 'Congratulations' culminates with a plingy warped romp about perseverance and their creative process. They troll out, “You throw it in your cauldron/ Start with a simlpe stock of all the ways/ And salt to taste.” Honestly I haven’t tried a better brew in a some time.

While they conjure their heroes up from rock and roll graves many times throughout CONGRATULATIONS, it is still MGMT’s own incantation of music. Head over to their own website -here- to listen for yourself.

Rating: 5 of out 5

Key moment: The crescendo towards the end of ‘Someone’s Missing’ throws a snake of a bass line down your back and encircles you in a shrine of psych rock.