MGMT "Congratulations"
Surely Andrew VanWyngarden and Ben Goldwasser were listening to the musical Hair when they wrote the sleeve notes for their new album Congratulations. They reckon Flash Delirium is “The Natives go all Dance-hall Stomp as something strange in the water forces a Flash time Strobo-cop emanation of the will. Delusion Extrusion” I read that and can’t help but recall the similar salute to each song on the vinyl sleeve of Hair. ( “Be-In is a raga-rock for exclusive use at love-ins” – see?)
From the Be-My-Baby drumbeat in Siberian Breaks to Brian Eno’s surfy guitars, Congratulations has a sixties feel to the point where it occasionally feels like we’re in an Austin Powers montage. There are some utter missteps, like the irritatingly named Lady Dada’s Nightmare, wordless but for someone screaming over a Pink Floyd-like dirge – not a sound I would ever choose to hear. Someone’s Missing begins in non-endearing halting falsetto, and just when you want to throw a shoe at the stereo or perhaps your own head just to make it stop the song changes tack. In its burst of sunshiny sound you get that “we’re all hugging and singing the chorus together” feeling. But then the song ends, quickly, infuriatingly.
I’m not sure if lead single Flash Delirium is quite “the sound of dimensions colliding and bleeding into each, the tao spinning into white light” as the breathless press release claimed, but it does grow on you eventually. Bearing a singalong chorus and that same engagingly twinkly-fuzzy sound that you hear in the Mint Chicks’ Bad Buzz, it’s really pretty fun. It even throws in a little bonus jazz flute.
In Congratulations, MGMT fling earnestness at you by the spadeful and you’ll either love or hate them for it. Penning tracks like Song For Dan Treacy (of Television Personalities) and Brian Eno could – and, I’m sure, will – raise a fast sneer but MGMT seem so sincere it’s hard to write them off completely when I’m sure I’d do something equally cringey myself given the platform.
The eponymous closing song is one of those paeans to the burdens of the famous life (see for example Charlotte Church’s Confessional Song). It verges on undoing any goodwill with its sighingly delivered “I’ll keep your dreams/you pay attention to me” but I guess since they are rather famous and all they’re completely entitled to comment on its ups and downs. Congratulations dudes, you’ve made an album.
