Music Review: MGMT: Congratulations

Brooklyn coy band MGMT has moved far from the radiant singalongs of Oracular Spectacular and done a headstand of sorts with wild psychedelia in their second album Congratulations

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Album: Congratulations
Label: Sony BMG
Price: Adam Brody
Rating: ***1/2

Brooklyn coy band MGMT has moved far from the radiant singalongs of Oracular Spectacular and done a headstand of sorts with wild psychedelia in their second album Congratulations. The opening track It's working, hits you like the first time you heard the Last Shadow Puppets (The Arctic Monkeys side project, of course, minus the Brit accents). It's sudden flashback of a classic era -- the 60s spy theme drum grooves and riffs that the track begins with -- but at no point does the new MGMT album sound contrived. MGMT lives by its lines in Someone's Missing: "Somewhere there's an honest soul ufffd/And what's extinct might come alive/A purple smoke in some eternal shrine..." Someone's Missing, with its shining church organ synths and Andrew VanWyngarden's falsetto, builds into a junkie crescendo that ends before it begins. Flash Delirium with its quivering pan pipes and fake flute sounds is another spark of genius on the album. VanWyngarden sings, "You'll never be as good as the Rolling Stones" -- surely the band is on its mock routine again -- they've made no bones about being crushed by the thought of stardom. There's also a tribute to Brian Eno -- an instrumental ode on the synths in factu00a0 and a dig at Lady Gaga on Lady Dada's Nightmare.



It may not be easy to stick to this new sound but MGMT will give you reason to believe you haven't heard any of it before. Congratulations may not pop a smiley on every other note, but defines the evolution of one of the most talented bands of this generation.

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