Categories : Miscellany, Rock + Pop.
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Rating: 4 / 5 Reviewer: Kevin Hartford |
Congratulations, the sophomore album by Brooklyn band MGMT, is heavily influenced by sixties and seventies rock. Each track becomes a game of spot-the-influence, and it’s a difficult game to win – there are multiple nods to decades past on each of the nine songs presented here, with any number of disparate styles placed next to or piled on top of one another.
‘It’s Working’ starts off with surf-rock guitars and then quickly turns into something that sounds like Ozzy Osbourne backed by the Mamas and the Papas. A sitar accompanies harmonized, almost haunting vocals over sparse instrumentation on ‘Someone’s Missing,’ but its final moments could be a mash-up of ABBA and the Carpenters. ‘Siberian Breaks,’ a twelve-minute number, changes gears repeatedly, alternating between prominent bass lines, Bob Dylan-esque spoken verses, Simon and Garfunkel-like acoustics, and a two-minute, vocal-free ending that resembles the Who’s ‘Baba O’Riley.’
They’re all non-linear songs with numerous start-and-stop tempo changes. Lyrically and musically, things go from A to D to Z to Q. It’s as if MGMT wanted nothing more than to make a record that would be deemed unclassifiable. Prominent organs and echoed vocal effects put ‘Song for Dan Treacy’ in psychedelic-rock territory, but it lacks a simplified structure – the closest thing it has to a chorus is the mocking line, “He made his mind up,” and even that sounds weirdly out of place.
MGMT isn’t married to this non-formula, however – the pseudo-ballad ‘I Found a Whistle’ is rather straightforward and works quite well on its own, and ‘Lady Dada’s Nightmare’ is a mostly-instrumental number save for the distant screams and wails that can be heard in the background. The band is consistent in its inconsistency.
Congratulations is best summed up by ‘Brian Eno,’ a tribute to what MGMT has learned from the former Roxy Music member and currently revered solo artist, the tone of which wavers between melancholic and hyperactive. One of the lyrics is Eno’s full, fifteen-syllable name. Another is the lament: “We’re always one step behind him.” Though MGMT is less one step behind and more off to the side, veering diagonally down their own strange path.
