MGMT: Congratulations (Redux)

A while back, I wrote a scathing review of this album the day it leaked. To be honest, I wrote the damn thing delirious with the flu, and felt like hating on something to keep my mind off my delirium. I have since then listened to "Congratulations", and I still don't think it's all that. I read tons of blogs and all the popular music mags, and this friggin album is getting only stellar reviews! Well, allow me to break the trend, it's no masterpiece!! I am intrigued by a lot of qualities this band has to offer, but it's no "Zeppelin 3", nor is it hardly as good as Pavement's "Terror Twilight"-- otherwise known as the worst of the Pavement albums (I happen to like that one, but it isn't their finest hour).

Here are the few tracks worth noting- "It's Working", "Someone's Missing", "Flash Delirium", "Siberian Breaks" and "Congratulations". That's five of nine songs. So basically, the MGMT kids passed my- Do you Rock or do you Suck? - test. "It's Working" is a broken collection of song-parts squashed together to sound like Phil Spector making a Surf-Rock song, or rather a 'Smurf-Rock' song, since the guy sings with a cartoony high-pitched squeal I don't even know who to compare him to. It's like he's being strangled during the recording session. It's a decent opening track. "Someone's Missing" is about two minutes in length, and captures the sound of the Jackson 5, but quickly fades out before you can really fall in love with it. "Flash Delirium" tends to be everyone's favorite, and mine too. I like The Kinks choir back-up vocals behind Andrew Van Wyngarden's "pillar of hope" Gospel leads and I like the idea of ADD Pop music, since there's about fifty changes in a four minute single. It really isn't that different from anything The Kinks put out on any of there numerous Rock Operas. "Siberian Breaks" is the twelve minute track that caught a lot of attention, I think just because it's twelve minutes long. There's some plagiarizing going on here, and I'm not gonna get into it this round, 'cause I caused a ruckus the first time I compared this shit to something, but I'll just say- they took some influence from 60's Bubblegum Rock and expanded on it. (Anyone that knows me, knows I collected the shit out of 60's Bubblegum music, from The Monkees to 1910 Fruitgum Company. Why? Because I was the only ten year old record collecting geek I knew, and the whole genre was more interesting to me than collecting baseball cards) And finally, the title-track "Congratulations" is a feel-good number, with auto-biographical lyrics, which I'm a sucker for because it's honest coming from a band that hasn't lived anything worth singing about, but all of their success off the first record- "Oracular Spectacular".

So here's my review, my opinion, and my final response to the record- it's OK. It's not marvelous, it's not an embarrassment, though a little behind the times for what was expected. I think I'm more interested in why this band is popular than the actual music. They're like the New Kids on the Block of Indie-Rock, except they're on Columbia Records with a million+ bucks pumped behind them. It's not a record I'm going to listen to much, but I'm also going to stay off the hate machine toward this band till I hear the next one. I think their third record will be the decider. Any group that grabs 'the band you love, and the band you love to hate' trophy gets my attention. So here's the link, decide for yourself.

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