Unlike my last review of Small Black’s “Limits of Desire” this will not be a 400 page affair. That review was long for various reasons, it was highly personal the way the album affected me due to my history and mental associations with the band’s music. More so, it is a fantastic album and it was impossible to emphasize how fantastic it is without a bit of room for me to carry on. Also, I just wasn’t a very concise that day, because, let’s be real, that review is way too long.

The point is, “MGMT” is not an album worth spending much time on. Which is a real shame, because MGMT’s past two efforts were pretty great. “Oracular Spectacular” was liked by most because of the three pop gems it included, but it’s truly a great album for mixing those up with kooky shit like “The Handshake” and “Of Birds, Moons and Monsters”, the two best tracks on the album.

“Congratulations” may have alienated some fans, those who were only interested in synth pop hooks, and they would graduate on to artists like M83 and Imagine Dragons (have fun with that, by the way). The ADD generation wasn’t prepared for a 12 minute slice of awesome like “Siberian Breaks”. But the hardcore fans, the people who liked the second half of “Oracular Spectacular” more than the first, they stuck around and enjoyed “Congratulations” for what it was: A very good, not great album.

I understand that MGMT is psychedelic rock, and their music is very progressive. So I can at least respect them for the fallacy that is their latest effort. But they seem to have an issue, and that could be one of a couple things.

First, while psychedelic rock is clearly inspired by and made for drugs (Listen to “Oracular Spectacular” while tripping sometime if you haven’t already. I hear it’s highly recommended.), no music should require drugs to be listenable. Yet with “MGMT” it’s pretty much a prerequisite. MGMT seems to have forgot that their audience can’t be on acid all the time.

Secondly, and more frighteningly, it’s very possible that they’ve run out of ideas. I get this from the fact that “Congratulations” was non-commercial and shirked their anointed roles as radio superstars because they had too many good hooks. This is prevalent on “Oracular Spectacular” as well. MGMT regularly pumped out songs that would use a hook once, where most bands would make it the centerpiece of the song. Their music was an explosion of ideas.

“MGMT” has no hooks. At least none of note, aside from that of “Your Life Is A Lie”. But even that song beats the hook to death by never straying from the same riff for two minutes straight. Even AC/DC shook it up more than that.

On top of this, there are no interesting bass lines, no keyboard flourishes, etc. In fact all the virtuoso playing and interesting arrangements of their previous work has been swallowed whole by a deep buzzing sound. Not what I would call an improvement. So perhaps the band is simply out of ideas, which is a shame. Maybe they blew their wad too early.

Or possibly MGMT knows exactly what they’re doing and they intentionally want to make an album that is full of muddied bass and screeching highs. An album that is hard to listen to. I’ll give them some respect for having the stones to not give a shit if their album sells, and even a little more for doing something that sounds pretty unique.

I will give credit where credit is due, “Alien Days” is a good song. It’s the only song that resembles their old style in terms of structure. Additionally, “Mystery Disease” and “Introspection” are fairly listenable, though not highly recommended. As one listens to this album, hope springs from the fact that there are some recognizable traits here, and the issue is more with the intentionally noisy and non-musical production of the album.

Final verdict? “MGMT” is a pretty not good album, coming from a band with great talent. Unfortunately here they keep the weirdness but none of the melodies or good instrumentation, replacing it instead with droning anti-songs that really could only sound good if one was on dissociative drugs.

My hope is that after this failed experiment, MGMT continues to experiment in the exact opposite direction.

Now who wants some Ketamine?

-Josh Loney