TBO.com - TBO is Tampa Bay Online

Duo Goes Back To The Future On 'Spectacular'

ADVERTISEMENT

By CURTIS ROSS, The Tampa Tribune

Published: February 7, 2008

Begun, more or less, as a goof, MGMT shows a serious flair for left-of-center pop on its debut full-length album.

Fans of Flaming Lips won't be surprised to learn that the band's long-time producer, David Fridmann, shares production credit for "Oracular Spectacular" with MGMT. Both outfits share a gift for melody highlighted by Fridmann's dense, spacey production.

But where the Lips began as an inept but intriguing guitar band before morphing into something else entirely, MGMT - Ben Goldwasser and Andrew Van Wyngarden - started as a college prank, determined to provoke or antagonize audiences and little else.

That snot-nosed sensibility doesn't transfer to "Oracular Spectacular" other than in some mildly unsettling lyrics - "Time to Pretend," the opening track, finds the duo fantasizing about rock stardom in the form of model wives and heroin, while on "Weekend Wars" they've gone primitive, ready to hunt and kill their lunch.

They would have to do better than that to upset the overall mood of the album, though, best exemplified on "Kids," a melange of synth-pop, noise-pop and sugar-sweet harmonies that would sound blissful even if the duo was declaring war in the lyrics (it isn't).

"4th Dimensional Transition" sets a surf-rock melody atop an electro-pop beat. "Pieces of What" is laptop Americana with a nod to the Stones' "Dead Flowers."

"Oracular Spectacular" is the sound of generations of pop collapsing onto each other and being put back together with no instructions. The parts are old but the sound is new.

Download this: "Kids"

Share this:

Loading Comments...

Email Print

ADVERTISEMENT