Thursday, March 25th 2010

Reviews:  MGMT

MGMT Give Themselves Congratulations

By Johnny Firecloud

You have to hand it to MGMT. With Congratulations, the band has all but intentionally alienated their core audience in an attempt to scale back the concept of what they are, fully employing their artistic freedom to throw a grenade into the heart of the hipster tumor cluster that’s grown malignant around them, otherwise stifling the natural process with expectation.

Radio’s going to have a hell of a time trying to incorporate any of these tracks into the indie stream, and the dancefloor will have absolutely none of it – that is, until someone from Sigur Rós takes one of the many pieces of Siberian Breaks and remixes it into something bumpy. That’s essentially the goal: alienating envelope-pushing and artistic honesty at all costs, even if the price is success among their established fanbase. It’s a deliberate back-turn to the audience who impatiently dismissed the second half of 2007′s Oracular Spectacular, the kids just looking for a good segue between Grizzly Bear and the Dirty Projectors on the mixtape. Selah.

As Ben Goldwasser explained to Spinner, Congratulations is an intentional hard left from the indie championship, an open reminder that they meant it when they said they’d only pretend to be rock stars. They made Oracular for themselves, to their own liking, and when all hell broke loose it wasn’t quite what they were hoping for. “We’re trying to come to grips with that world. It’s not our world. We don’t feel comfortable in it,” Ben said before the latest release. “But we didn’t want to make that typical second album either, about fame. So we’re definitely observing it, as opposed to revelling in it.” He was a little more detailed with NME, explaining the band’s own comparison to their previous work, “There definitely isn’t a Time To Pretend or a Kids on the album.”

The album kicks off with It’s Working, a self-confident swan dive into surf-pop that’s as relevant to the past three decades as a butter churner would be.  They ask “how will I know if it’s working?,” the nervous anticipatory build-up to an acid trip. Fitting, because Congratulations is the most intentionally expectation-defying psychedelic clusterfuck of an album you’ve heard in years. And somehow, it kind of works.

Is it a stroke of musical genius? Hell no. But it’s good, a refreshing middle finger to any and every expectation placed on the band since their meteoric arrival as would-be indie heroes (as “indie” as one can be, backed by Sony), and there are some truly inspired moments. Soft-spoken Kinks knockoff Song For Dan Treacy delivers the first of many psychedelia-pop throwback sounds, while early-giveaway Flash Delirium opens with a Bowie-esque vocal drip built on a Casio keyboard beat before bursting into guiltless Brian Wilson surf-rock territories, counterplaying vocals and adorable melodies dissolving into chanty, accelerated lunacy.

Ever-changing album centerpiece Siberian Breaks is every indication of the band’s desire to smash out of the box, hinting at their previous B-side Metanoia while brimming with ’60s sunshine-chorals and psychedelia. The doubletime shift two minutes and change in remains firmly rooted in the exterminated peace and love era, but earns a delicate, shiny-afternoon Britpop lightheartedness before an inexplicable complete departure into abstract noise fusion that circles back around to the central melody with sleight of hand grace. The song ends on a pretty note, or so we think; where a two second gap should be a low synth blatt quickly rises with swirling electro-trippiness in its company, a two-minute plus digital bath of beautiful blips under a synth-heavy drum beat that’s arguably the most beautiful groove on the album.

Rhyming “what does he know” and “you reap what you sow” with “Brian Eno” is a quick way for a track to not be taken seriously, but as far as tributes go there’s worse that can be done than a breathless dark-pop jam with a laughable yet catchy chorus. Those curious to linear consistency in the album need only to contrast Brian Eno with Lady Dada’s Nightmare (which we’ll go ahead and assume couldn’t bear the Lady GaGa title without legal ramifications), a surf-haze instrumental track that builds an interesting climax, despite what sounds like catwoman getting ground up by a chainsaw at certain moments. The two songs could not have less in common.

There’s nothing seamless about the way the album progresses, and they’ve succeeded in mixing the endearing weirdness of the Flaming Lips and Stereolab while offering only shades of familiarity to their previous work. A little bit bubblegum pop, a dash of Floyd and a whole lotta vintage California dreamin’ make for an odd bird of an album that threatens to fall apart if not approached with the right set of ears. Handle with care.