Album Review: MGMT by MGMT

Most people who leap to claim that MGMT lost their way or wish that they'd return to their roots are those who pine over their blockbuster success that was their debut, Oracular Spectacular. I fall into a different camp. Perhaps it was because my initial exposure to the group was through Flash Delirium, but I consider their follow-up, Congratulations, to be their crowning achievement, near-perfect except for the aimless Lady Dada's Nightmare. So, when I heard that the band was moving even further away from their alt-pop image for a more experimental take, I was hyped.

This album does not live up to said hype. In fact, I don't know if it could live up to any fan's hype, unless they found both previous albums lacking.

The shift in the group's third, self-titled album is one that ditches the prog rock, multitiered songs of Congratulations and the poppy hooks of Oracular Spectacular, going for an odd psych-drone variant. I could have bought into that if the songs were well structured or memorable enough, but instead, many of them fling their ideas at you either too quickly or over a slow-build to nowhere, allowing for little room for building on top of these ideas.

OK, maybe I'm getting too in-depth too early. The best comparison I can make is that this album is their non-mainstream equivalent to Oracular Spectacular. By that, I mean that, while Congratulations had a great flow to it and was evenly paced throughout the album, Oracular Spectacular was front-loaded to a fault, dooming the second half of the album to the insurmountable feat of besting what came before. MGMT faces the same problem, but to a far graver extent.

The album opens with the prog-based Alien Days, the first single from the album. Despite some ill-fitting elements (the off-tune melody in the bridge), the format of the verses really stuck with me. It's a suitable opening in that it eases the gap between Congratulations and this album, but does little to signify what's to come.

While the following song, Cool Song No. 2, doesn't falter much in quality (despite not taking to it much on my first listen, it's grown to become one of my favorites on the album), it's quite the departure from the opener. The heavy beats, the low-register vocals, everything points to an entirely different direction. And that's one of the problems of this album: Despite coming up with a made-up term for the genre of the album, I had trouble figuring out just what sense of identity MGMT was going for on this thing. They cited Aphex Twin as a major source, but I see little to no sign of that influence emerging. If anything (as I'll get into later), it's more of an imitation of Animal Collective than anything.

The next couple of songs, Mystery Disease and Introspection, both seem under-confident for the usually boisterous group. The lacking vocals fit the subject matter of both of these songs, but ultimately lead to them fading into the background once they end (except for Introspection; dear God, I don't know how this song is stuck in my head but I want it out).

Your Life is a Lie, despite the lackluster vocals, won me over due to how cohesively the song works. Imagine this song as a loudspeaker announcement in an idyllic society where everything is going perfectly. Then it all makes sense: the monotone, the pseudo-chanting, the basic beat, and the minimalistic chords all paint a larger picture. If only the rest of the album's songs had this much thought put into muted results, I might have bought into it.

After Your Life is a Lie, the album takes a catastrophic tailspin. A Good Sadness, though I found it interesting the first time around, ends up meandering for its entire length, never really doing much with the cool synth at its core. Astro-Mancy is the closest thing to homage this album comes to, with vocal style and instrumentation taken straight from Animal Collective's playbook. Yet, it fails to make it its own and dissipates from memory the second it ends.

And then there's I Love You Too, Death: the absolute nadir in both the album and MGMT's entire career. I'm OK with slow-build songs. I'm OK with off-kilter instrumentation. But, for whatever reason, this song just pisses me off to an irrational degree. Maybe it's the tonally-deafening recorders of doom. Maybe it's the lack of energy in vocal inflection (again). Maybe it's the fact that it makes the 12-minute Visiting Friends by Animal Collective seem progressive and evolving by comparison (yes, a weak comparison as I actually like that song, but still). Everything in this song just annoys me to an absurd degree. By the time the song finally builds to nothing, ending without a clear resolution, I was ready to just call it quits.

Then Plenty of Girls in the Sea comes on. Despite the unorthodox, out-of-key synth and the skittering beat throughout, something about this song just wins me over. Maybe it's because it includes the best vocals on the album save for Alien Days. Maybe it's the cool time signature swap in the breakdown. Maybe it's the group's best key change in the final verse. I just love everything about this song in ways that I can't adequately explain and it's by far my favorite song on the album.

The album ends on perhaps the most-telling note it could: the schizophrenic, uncertain An Orphan of Fortune. What starts out as a moody, solemn piece turns into a slow stomp, before shifting into a bluesy bridge, then reverting back to the stomp section. I honestly can't pin down my thoughts on this song as a whole, except that it ends leaving me even more mixed than before.

Did I enjoy this album? In parts. Did I dislike this album? In parts. Was I uncertain on how to feel overall? In parts. What does this show about MGMT's identity, as of now? That, it too, is in parts.

Best Songs: Plenty of Girls in the Sea, Cool Song No. 2, Your Life is a Lie
Worst Songs: I Love You Too, Death, Astro-Mancy, An Orphan of Fortune