MGMT

Oracular Spectacular


MGMT's Oracular Spectacular takes me back to a time that I hadn't actually been alive in, but feel like I could have been just by listening to their 2008 Sony released album. These boys are straight out of the seventies and have got me crazed on a whole other psychedelic level that I'm left confused. Dumbfounded in a good way. I don't know where to place them. Are they indie rock, experimental, alternative, jungle-surf-safari? I suppose this is a good thing; if you can't be labeled, then the pressure for future conformity disappears. Even checking out the band's website is a trippy experience. Whoismgmt.com is (purposefully?) strange with bold colourful images and a grid placement that wouldn't quite work if you didn't understand the band's mentality.

The album sleevage "invites you to open your mind to the multi-dimensional vibrating Technicolor sounds of Oracular Spectacular". It is an artistically motivated photographic diary of Ben Goldwasser and Andrew VanWyngarden, who used to be known as The Management.

Thankyou freedom of speech for allowing us access to lyrical purity evident in all tracks especially 'Time to Pretend'. "I'll move to Paris, shoot some heroin, and f*** with the stars. You man the island and the cocaine and the elegant cars". They jump a decade with their eighties-sounding synthesizer. MGMT bring back the feel of vinyl in 'Pieces of What'. ''Electric Feel' has disco influences but seems to emulate its own genre, creating funky existential ecstasy. With its finale instrumental riff, 'Of Moons, Birds & Monsters' is the kind of track you need when you're driving by yourself on a long deserted highway at night. 'Weekend Wars' makes you want someone in that passenger seat.

I feel like these Brooklynites are the fore bearers/brainchild of some great musical institution/innovation that is yet to come. In this way I label this band "indie neo-acid retro electronica, boheme-hippie psychodelia rock, with a stroke of much-needed audio genius". MGMT are a hallucinogenic metaphor for what can only be called; good music. Refreshingly odd, yet undecidedly potentially mainstream (well, 40 years ago).

Their EP, Time to Pretend also has worthy tracks such as 'Indie Rokkers' and gives way to the suspenseful anticipation that Oracular Spectacular satisfies.

They're real and they're spectacular.



Comments? don't agree?
Let me know if you feel the same blissful nostalgia...
Listen to MGMT on my iPOD to the right...

Photos: Courtesy of Wikipedia