Congratulations

I was as behind the ball as could be with MGMT.  Like everyone else I first heard them in late 2008 when “Kids” could be heard everywhere from radio stations, to college dorm rooms, to cell phone commercials.  If there’s one thing I hate about pop music, it’s a gimmick.   I listened to the first 5 tracks of Oracular Spectacular before deeming the duo as a couple of unoriginal numbskulls who stumbled upon a few catchy synthesizer riffs and decorated them with dance rock fluff. It turns out I am the numbskull.

I then read a Rolling Stones article about the recording process for their new album, Congratulations, which altered my standpoint. The articled detailed how the duo secluded themselves in a house and endlessly rehearsed and recorded until they found the sounds they were looking for. What really caught my attention was a quote from Ben Goldwasser, the bands electronic half.  He said, “We have to keep pushing for sounds that are one step ahead of the pack.”  This statement makes too much sense considering the musical age we are in, where all types of rock borrow from one another. In the end, it comes down to artists finding a unique sound hidden in all the melded genres and release it before someone else does.  After reading it I gave Oracular Spectacular a second listen and immediately started to hear a band fighting for their music.

Now, instead of tasty synthesizer licks and danceable rock beats, the new album Congratulations introduces a fresh new consistency to MGMT.   Where bands such as  Wolfmother, The Strokes, and The Hives imitate early 70’s hard rock(Led Zeppelin, Tom Petty, The Who), Congratulations sounds like a modernized pre-classic rock album.

If you spun me around 10 times real fast then played me this CD, I would swear I was listening to Pink Floyd’s début album Piper at the Gates of Dawn(1967).  The opening track, “It’s Working,” has a strong resemblance to Floyd’s song “Lucifer Sam”, while the album’s only instrumental track “Lady Dada's Nightmare” has striking similarities to “See Saw” off of Pink Floyd’s A Saucerful of Secrets(1968).   Although this does give the album some consistency, at times the band takes their Floydian liberties too far.  For instance, the 12 minute psychedelic rant “Siberian Breaks”, though having its moments, rambles without a satisfying finish and will lose listeners.

The most upbeat tracks are “Song for Dan Treacy” and “Brian Eno” where the band has the air of a punkish mixture of The Kinks and The B-52’s.   Though they aren’t the most innovative tracks, they give the album a tempo to put MGMT back on the dance floor.

Aside from mimicking Syd Barret and Ray Davies, vocalist Andrew VanWyngarden also revisits echoey vocals with the track “Someone’s Missing”.  His chanting of “It feels like someone’s missing”, at the end of this song sounds like the backing vocals of a The Mamas and the Papas single and will get stuck in your head.

The high point on the album is “I Found A Whistle”.  It is a mixture of all the pre-classic rock vocal influences with the epic ‘spectacularness’ of the synthesizer in their previous album. Here is where they find, “sounds that are one step ahead of the pack”.

While “Song for Dan Treacy” and “Brian Eno” are literal tributes to MGMT’s recording influences, the lyrics of the closing title track “Congratulations” reveal the humble message of the album.  Rather than seeing their explosive success as a “paid vacation”, they recognize it as a constant congratulating that prevents them from “telling what’s really there.”  Furthermore, they would “rather dissolve than to be ignored.” To MGMT success is an all encompassing congratulatory force, that leaves them blind and “dead in the water,” yet they can’t help but be addicted to it.

Considering the album is littered with so many 1960’s throwbacks, one could argue their previous album held more originality.  However, Congratulations has a consistency from track to track which Oraclular Spectacular lacked and in this sense is more dangerously addictive.

Yo Mama Joke of the Day:

Yo mama is prohibited to walk in wooded areas, so as to limit Sasquatch conspiracies.

Wise quote of the day:

The phone book will never be replaced by the internet.  You can't sit on the internet when you're too short to sit at the dinner table and won't fit in a baby chair.