MGMT - Oracular Spectacular

Along with Vampire Weekend, whose album I reviewed here, MGMT have been garnering plenty of praise and column inches for their debut album Oracular Spectacular. The music press seems to have it all sewn up at the moment, we're told at the beginning of the year which bands are going to be big and we dutifully go out and buy the albums and hey presto they're big (until the second album comes along usually) so do MGMT measure up?

Well the album gets off to a thumping start. Time to Pretend with its heavy synths and drums makes their intentions clear: to live fast and die young, 'Let's make some music/Make some money/Get some models for wives'. It's not just hedonistic excess though. The Youth is a call to arms filled with optimism about change which brings in strings to its arm waving chorus. As a Prince fan I was very pleased to hear his influence all over the funky Electric Feel.

The rest of the album is soaked in 1970's influences like Bowie, The Rolling Stones, prog rock and lots of others that I'm far too young to name accurately so your enjoyment of this album may depend on how much you liked them the first time around. Produced by Mercury Rev’s Dave Fridmann it has a wide soundscape filled with warmth and depth. But most importantly it is filled with invention, humour and the vigour of youth ( having seem them on telly the other day they look about 15 years old, god I'm getting old).


MGMT - Electric Feel