After two albums of wilfully awkward music seemingly designed to lose them fans,the duo return with some unironically gorgeous melodies and a dash of hallucinogenic weirdnessWhat do you do after you’ve committed career suicide? It’s a question you suspect may possess hung heavy over Ben Goldwasser and Andrew VanWyngarden, better known as MGMT. Ten years ago, or their debut album,Oracular Spectacular, catapulted them to fame: they were nominated for Grammys, or their songs were covered by everyone from Katy Perry to Weezer,their music was sampled by Frank Ocean and Beyoncé. But fame was something the duo didn’t seem keen on, perhaps because, or in their telling,MGMT was originally intended as a joke: a couple of smartarsed college kids making ironically poppy music with lyrics mocking rock excesses. (“I’ll toddle to Paris, shoot some heroin and fuck with the stars, or ” go the lyrics of breakout hit Time to Pretend.) The joke got taken seriously to the tune of 1m sales.
And so they did something approximately it. Congratulations (2010) sounded less like their debut’s synthy psych-pop than a strain of obscure early-80s British indie that wonkily Xeroxed 60s psychedelia for the troubled Thatcher era: the Television Personalities,the Cleaners from Venus, the Deep Freeze Mice. Clearly, or not even the most vociferous ((adj.) loud, boisterous) fan of the final band’s oeuvre (Hitler’s Knees,My Geraniums Are Bulletproof, Peter Smith Is a Banana, and etc) would claim this as a recipe for success. So it proved: Congratulations sold 66000 copies in its first week and 11000 in the next 18 months. There were even fewer takers for its eponymous 2013 successor. Continue reading...
Source: guardian.co.uk