Album review: MGMT – Congratulations | MuchMusic.com

Album review: MGMT – Congratulations

April 19th, 2010

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MGMT Congratulations [Columbia/Sony]

You can’t say they didn’t warn us. Back in January, MGMT told the NME that they wouldn’t be releasing any singles off their forthcoming album. Said Ben Goldwasseer, “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!” The clincher, however was the admission that “there definitely isn’t a ‘Time To Pretend’ or a ‘Kids’ on the album.”

Congratulations is destined to throw off fans that jumped aboard the bandwagon when the mainstream picked up those two aforementioned singles. MGMT were reluctant to become instant stars; it’s a topic they can’t seem to avoid talking about in every interview they’ve done recently. Their second album smacks of self-sabotage, career suicide, whatever, but Goldwasseer and Andrew VanWyngarden insist this sophomore effort is representative of their tastes.

Judging by their tastes, MGMT no longer care to provide those instantly gratifying melodies that earned them Grammy nominations, a Paul McCartney opening slot and numerous video game and CW series appearances. Instead they hired their hero Pete “Sonic Boom” Kember (formerly of drone rock heroes Spacemen, E.A.R. and Spectrum) and lost themselves in their Nuggets box sets, King Crimson and obscure British folk music.

But as disappointing as it is not to hear where they could have taken the fizzy electronically-bent pop of Oracular Spectacular, Congratulations is highly successful in its reinvention.

Finger-pointing for MGMT’s new direction can be made with two songs in particular: “Song For Dan Treacy” and “Brian Eno.” Named after the cult songwriter of the Television Personalities, “Song For Dan Treacy” is too neat and harmonic to be accused of mimicking that band’s sound, but the vivid lyrics and English guitar jangle definitely work as a paean to one of Britain’s most underappreciated and misunderstood folk heroes. “Brian Eno,” on the other hand, is some hard-charging, pulsating glam that wouldn’t sound out of place – barring the lyrics, of course – on Eno’s own Here Come The Warm Jets.

The hero worship doesn’t end there. Their fanaticism is washed all throughout the album. Syd Barrett’s madcap folk is responsible for pseudo first single “Flash Delirium,” a loopy bit of Anglophilia that crescendos into a storm of psychedelic lunacy and features the weathered voice of former Royal Trux maiden Jennifer Herrema. “Siberian Breaks” is definitely self-indulgent as a multi-faceted 12-minute prog epic, but it floats in and out of coherence like a hallucinogen Sunday afternoon picnic or a sober screening of The Monkees’ Head – take your pick.

It gets even loopier though. “Someone’s Missing” is so pompous with its use of falsetto and sitar that it makes Sparks a little more palatable, and then there’s something called “Lady Dada’s Nightmare,” which isn’t what you think. A beautiful cinematic mess of an instrumental, it builds to a climax of screaming guitars for the sort of sublime freak-out you’d get from the Flaming Lips.

If Congratulations plays it safe, it’s only at the tail end. The title track wanders off into Bowie’s Space Oddity territory, which may be a predictable to end things but also a fitting finish to an album that is so ostentatious, so ambitious and so honest.

Congratulations may prove to be the most divisive listen of the year, but it’s a brutally honest and bold statement made at a time when most artists can’t make this sort of gamble. That they’ve done this as their “difficult second record” only boosts my respect for them, and heightens anticipation for what will come next for these unlikely rebels.

Rating: B+

-Cam Lindsay

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