ORACULAR SPECTACULAR-MGMT

Oracular Spectacular-
MGMT
Label-Columbia
Status-Out as of 2008
1st technical Studio Album
Rating-3.5 Feathers

The Management came under the radar by opening for of Montreal back in 2005. Since then, and after a name change to MGMT, they have released their debut album ‘Oracular Spectacular’, quickly becoming hailed as “the band to watch” for 2008. Taking you through spacey-guitar riffs to the tune of psychedelic synthesizers, is easy to see why ‘Oracular Spectacular’ is the subject of recent hype.

This journey begins with a first step, and that first step is ‘Time to Pretend’. Chronicling the life of a stereotypical rockstar backed by moody synthesizers, and with an opening synth line effective enough to give you goosebumps, can you believe they didn’t choose this as the finale? After the pretending stops, MGMT goes on to prove that they know how to write a dancefloor filler. ‘Electric Feel’ is a space-rock influenced disco tune, and except for the disco feel it’s a great song. It’s not your typical dance song, but the thick bassline will be enough to help you develop a nice groove. After your trip to the late 70’s, ‘Kids’ comes in and brings you back with all its glory. The opening synthesizer is boss, and when the heavy backing synth comes in you have to get up and bop around, it’s simply impossible not to. With the basic synthesizer arrangement, punctuated by the sound of screaming kids and the main swooping synth line, you know MGMT’s created the perfect dance song that’s shockingly not on Top 40 charts. After the wonder comes the strife, also known as ‘4th Dimensional Transition’ and ‘Pieces of What’. ‘4th Dimensional Transition’ sounds like they tried to equal the drama of the previous songs, but failing to do so and adding that obnoxious quasi-tribal drum was a mistake. ‘Pieces of What’ is completely inconsistent with the album’s general sound. The whiney croon backed by a tinny acoustic guitar just sounds wrong, especially when they add the airy backing vocals and spacey synths at the end which even further just don’t go. ‘Of Moons, Birds & Monsters’ brings you out of your misery, taking you on a trip through an epic odyssey of sci-fi, simple guitar lines, and ambient synthesizers all ending with reverb strongly reminiscent of Muse. Past ‘Of Moons…’ the basic idea of the album fades, and the final two songs are passable. A great disappointment.

As a whole, MGMT are what they are hyped to be: masters of subtle space rock and neo-psychedelia. They’ve shown they can write works of genius, but they’ve also shown they can write a few easily-forgettables. They show extreme promise, and with their electric feel, there is still Time to Pretend for MGMT.

“We redid a lot of our songs that sounded too polished. Dave [the producer] ended up running the tracks through this thing that crushed them and made them sound really gross again. They're a lot better now.”-Ben Goldwasser

'Official' fan video for Kids

Recommendations: Time to Pretend, Electric Feel, Kids, Of Moons, Birds & Monsters
MGMT's Official Website
Note: Is that not the best lip synch, other than this, that you have ever seen in a music video? It's better than 99.9% of 'official' videos. I didn't put the official video for 'Kids' because the toddler crying makes me depressed. The lip synch in that sucks too. I mean, the video for A-Punk is better lip synched. I hope you enjoy and stay tuned for an of Montreal or a Tapes 'n Tapes review!