BY CHRISTINA BOUCOURT
On September 5th, after three long years of waiting for activity from psychedelic rock band MGMT, fans finally got a taste of the highly anticipated self-titled album. MGMT’s trailer was confusing, and didn’t relate to the album whatsoever, but it still gave fans a taste of the duo’s new sound. Their six-minute video featured six songs from the album while featuring recurring themes such as savage animals, NSA spies, and alien invasion.
MGMT is best known for their 2007 electro-funk debut album, Oracular Spectacular, which hit number 6 on Australian ARIA Charts and was named 18th best album of the decade by Rolling Stone magazine. In 2010, the band flopped in their second release, Congratulations. The inspiration for the synth-pop mysticism of “Of Moons, Birds and Monsters”, “Electric Feel”, and “Time to Pretend,” was long gone. The dramatic artsy association with the band was lost in an unoriginal sound, already overdone in the 80’s with an abundance of Pink Floyd copycats. With virtually no activity after the album’s tour, fans were left wondering what would become of MGMT. In early August, after announcing the release date of MGMT, the band posted a music video for “Your Life is a Lie,” the album’s first single.
With this new album unintentionally following the same three-year wait as their last, there was concern that MGMT would go down the same path as Congratulations. Most fans, however, seemed eager and oblivious to the thought of MGMT ever disappointing again. The band decided to take an experimental approach with MGMT, throwing caution to the wind. With this initiative, they took less consideration into the appeal of the album and focused on just doing what they wanted to do. Two or three of the songs were actually enjoyable for me, but most seemed carelessly strewn together with mediocre lyrics that aren’t rectified by the overall sound. Some fans liked the motive behind the album, which helped them in enjoying the music itself, but for me this album was just another Congratulations.
