Congratulations- MGMT

Track List:

  1. It’s Working
  2. Song For Dan Treacy
  3. Someone’s Missing
  4. Flash Delirium
  5. I Found a Whistle
  6. Siberian Breaks
  7. Brian Eno
  8. Lady Dada’s Nightmare
  9. Congratulations

Riding off of their success from their first album, Oracular Spectacular, MGMT went back into the studio to record their second LP. One of two things were going to happen with the band; either they would build off their previous success by writing more powerful and emotional songs, or completely disregard what made them successful. They chose the second option. For some bands completely re-inventing your style can be a good thing, unfortunately it didn’t work for MGMT, especially since this is only their second full album. I can honestly say I’m really disappointed with what they threw together for this CD.

A few months back MGMT released their first single, Flash Delirium, as a free online download. It got so much backlash from fans of MGMT that Andrew VanWyngarden actually apologized in an interview about the song. Honestly he should have just apologized for the entire album because it is mostly crap. It’s almost like they are trying to hard to be artistic but end up making a very poor attempt at writing abstract songs. I can’t belive that throughout the whole process of making this CD no one said to them “Hey, this record isn’t just ‘misunderstood’ it’s actually just a piece of shit.” I do believe that Andrew Vanwyngarden and Ben Goldwasser posses the qualities to write great songs, they proved that with OS, but they crammed way too many ideas into such a short album.

The beginning of the first song on the record sounds like we just caught up with MGMT in the middle of one of their jam sessions. The intro sounded like it lacked a lot of structure and sense. Some musicians can take that lack of structure and rebuild it into something that pleases their audience while still showing their creativity, however MGMT failed to do that. Everything sounds like it was just thrown together with no rhyme or reason, just a bunch of riffs randomly placed in random songs.

Flash Delirium is a prime example of what I’m talking about. The song opens up with a short middle eastern scale on the keyboard then VanWyngarden almost talks over a drum machine “Mild apprehension/ Blank dreams of the coming fun/ distort the odds of a turnaround/ gut screams next to none.” What the fuck does that mean? Once again it sounds like another attempt at being creative and just coming out as stupid. The song does sort of redeem itself with a great a decent build up to the finish, but overall it doesn’t really seem like it is material for a single.

Overall the album sounds unorganized, chaotic, and hectic, and not in a good way. I know that they are branching out and trying to be unique and I respect that completely. It’s not the fact that they broke away from their style that I don’t like, it’s the fac that they did an awful job at it that really bugs me. MGMT is a great band and they have a lot of talent in them. I’m going to chalk this album off as just a creative experiment, nothing more nothing less. Also, I’m going to give the album a few more listens from start to finish to see how it sits, but honestly I don’t think my initial reaction is going to change much. The one thing I can say that truly sums up my feelings about Congratulations is, better luck next time guys.

I give Congratulations a 2 out of 10