MGMT: CONGRATULATIONS

[rating:3]

MGMT: Congratulations

Label: Columbia

Release Date: April 13, 2010

A lot can happen in three years. Just ask Ben Goldwasser and Andrew VanWyngarden, the duo behind Brooklyn-based MGMT. In 2007, the band released Oracular Spectacular, an album made up mostly of neo-psychedelia but highlighted by a trio of glorious candy-colored synth-pop singles. One of them, the anthemic “Time to Pretend,” employed an ironic rock star daydream—complete with models, drugs, cars and choking on your own vomit—to convey genuine angst about expiring youth and the threat of a future spent in the muck of normality; it was also catchy enough to make them into actual rock stars. Only a few years after graduating from liberal arts college, the pair were opening for Radiohead, yielding collaboration requests from Paul McCartney, topping charts and winning Grammys and having the cliches they had previously only joked about thrust in their faces. It wasn’t exactly a leftfield success story—of all their fellow Williamsburg Players, it’s easy to imagine these two fashionable hipsters being the ones to hit it the biggest—but as guys who believed they could only pretend of a life beyond morning commutes and office jobs, Goldwasser and VanWyngarden would probably tell you the last three years have been totally fucking crazy.

Maybe too crazy. As hinted at by the sarcastically self-impressed title, Congratulations is a song cycle about fame, but musically it is a retreat from everything that actually made MGMT famous. Nothing here is as instantly grabby as Oracular Spectacular‘s Holy Trinity of “Time to Pretend,” “Kids” and “Electric Feel,” nor do any of the songs aspire to that level of supreme pop ecstasy. Instead, it expands on the elements of its debut overshadowed by that trio of tight, focused gems—namely, Oracular‘s loose, unfocused second half. Except with duller production. And less hooks. Oh, and fake British accents, for some reason.

Is this just a classic example of Difficult Second Album Syndrome? Or is it, as some early reviews have theorized, the band’s deliberate attempt to torpedo itself and, in the process, a fanbase it doesn’t really want? A little of both, probably. Those disappointed critics are forgetting that Oracular‘s singles were the anomalies on that album; the sound of Congratulations is more honest about what kind of band MGMT really is: retro-revivalists enamored with the free-flowing quirkiness of ’60s psyche-pop. But after fooling everyone into thinking you’re an electro-dance group, sticking a 12-minute, shape-shifting cloud of opium smoke (“Siberian Breaks”) in the middle of your sophomore effort is clearly an act of intentional polarization: Either you’re on this trip with them, or you never were to begin with.

All that’s fine, of course, if the songs are there. For the most part on Congratulations, they aren’t. Too many ideas feel incomplete. Opener “It’s Working,” driven by an ascending pseudo-surf guitar riff and underpinned by harpsichord and burbling percussion, starts with great forward momentum but eventually goes limp. “Someone’s Missing” begins with VanWyngarden’s lonely voice floating somewhere out in the ether before bursting into the sunniest moment on the album…and then it promptly fades out. At other times, the band shoves a bunch of those half-formed ideas into one song, causing the whole thing to either break apart at the seams (the schizoid panic of “Flash Delirium”) or drift off to nowhere (“Siberian Breaks,” the useless instrumental “Lady Dada’s Nightmare”). “Brian Eno,” a speedy hallucinogenic fantasy that imagines the titular producer doling out career advice from a black cathedral, pairs the record’s catchiest chorus with its goofiest concept, which must’ve thrilled the band’s label as it dug through all those fractured parts searching for something to sell the album on.

And then there’s the title track. It ends Congratulations on a somber, acoustic slow-dissolve, but it is really the sequel to “Time to Pretend,” where that song’s impossible rock’n’roll dreams come true. Only, instead of models and cars and drugs, the band finds itself surrounded by sycophants and accountants and new friends “that keep on combing back their smiles,” choking not on vomit but its own hype and living for nothing but empty pats on the back. If this is fame, VanWyngarden and Goldwasser would probably rather not have it anymore. And after this album, they might get their wish. As someone once said, life can always start up anew.

-Matthew Singer