Last Friday Sony Music ran a competition where MGMT fans were given the chance to hear the band’s new album Congratulations. Following a series of clues that led us to Sydney’s Hyde Park, FasterLouder managed to secure ourselves one of ten seats in a blacked-out van. After being bundled into the vehicle we were handed an MP3 player along with a pad of paper and crayons.
For the next forty minutes or so we were driven around the city listening to Congratulations whilst ( upon request ) drawing our ‘feelings’ about each song. We were not allowed to take notes and had to hand back our master artworks at the journey’s end.
Following this strange experience we sat down and tapped out a review of Congratulations ( from memory I might add ), and here are our first impressions.
MGMT – Congratulations
Brooklyn’s MGMT achieved everything a debut artist could ever dream of. A Grammy nomination for Kids, a win for the Justice remix of Electric Feel, global adulation, truckloads of records sold and a generation-defining track in Time To Pretend with lyrics like “I’m in the prime of my life. Let’s make some music, make some money, find some models for wives.”
The irony is that they’ve gone and created Congratulations, released worldwide on Sony on April 13. Let’s get it straight from the start. This is not Kids Part 2. Hell, it’s not even Oracular Spectacular Part 2. They could have easily made some money, grabbed those models and swum forever in rivers of gold. But on their sophomore album MGMT have shed their skin and grown up in front of our ears.
If you saw them on their world tour in 2009, you’d have a sense that something was changing. The easy-flowing taut pop of their debut morphed into drawn-out, lengthy soundscapes on stage. MGMT was already clawing at the edges of the box they had built.
Ben Goldwasser and Andrew VanWyngarden have stated they are trying to subvert the traditional with this. “We’d rather people hear the whole album as an album and see what tracks jump out rather than the ones that get played on the radio – if anything gets played on the radio!” Ben Goldwasseer told NME in January, eschewing the need for singles.
Unfortunately the music industry is harder to escape than that, as the release of the title track ‘Congratulations’ shows (call it what you want, it’s still a lead single).
But even when trying, MGMT can’t avoid melodies. Take Brian Eno, the glaringly obvious stand-out track on the album. A homage to the Roxy Music pioneer (“We’re always one step behind him, he’s Brian Eno”), it draws influences from multiple genres before feeding them back through Goldwasser and VanWyngarden’s stoned-out heads to create a tune that refuses to leave your head.
Their high benchmark is nowhere more evident than on Siberian Breaks, a mammoth 12-minute track that could easily be three songs rolled into one. In the middle, it breaks down so much that you’re convinced another song has begun. I Found A Whistle is another highlight, slowing the pace down to AIR-like beauty, while Lady Dada’s Nightmare – a not-so-veiled stab at Lady Gaga that’s even verbally mentioned in the Sonic Boom spoken word intro – trips the light fantastic. It begins innocently enough, and then the mangled garble of a woman screaming takes over the track until it descends into a cacophony of sound.
Listen to the track, Flash Delerium here:
Congratulations is an album that deserves multiple listens. Yes, there are moments when it seems overdrawn, like a couple of student visionaries with grand ambitions, and they will lose some fans with this album, but Congratulations is dreamy, intense, strange, hopeful and brilliant all in one. When MGMT aim for the stars, even when they miss spectacularly they still end up someone in psychedelic rock heaven.
Congratulations is out April 13 through Sony
