Oracular Spectacular - Dark Publications

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Editorial Reviews:

Amazon.co.uk
The term Oracular Spectacular might not mean much, if anything, at all--it's essentially nonsensical--but that doesn't stop it feeling exactlyright. Here is a band that treats dizzy cross-eyed awe and a vast bounding sense of sonic weightlessness as their yardstick, jostling to surpass themselves on a track-by-track basis and aiming for the musical equivalent of performing somersaults in tye-dye t-shirts off the rings of Jupiter. MGMT seemingly submit this debut album as an application to acquire and even supersede The Flaming Lips' previously uncontested mantle as spiritual leaders of over-sized Technicolor psychedelic-indie with a soul, weird but not so weird that swelling crowds and even flirtations with the charts aren't a foregone conclusion. "Time to Pretend" opens and sets a tone for the record, producer David Fridmann (Flaming Lips, Mercury Rev) providing a familiar expanse for them to riff across with bull's-eye synths, massive drums and their twist on the template--retro 80s electro and abstract shapes, see Suicide and the Talking Heads for reference. "The Youth" is centred around a hypnotically looping refrain that recalls Pink Floyd and David Bowie, as interpreted by a mellow Secret Machines and the brilliant "Pieces of What" is Ryan Adams spinning through cosmos with classic Neil Young on his headphones. "Future Reflections" meanwhile stand on its hands on a line somewhere in-between XTC and Ween. Thrillingly eclectic, endlessly colourful and never predictable. It's all a bit ridiculous, but indeed spectacularly so. --James Berry

Album Description
MGMT invites you to open your mind to the multi-dimensional vibrating Technicolor sounds of Oracular Spectacular.

Album Description
Japanese pressing. Forty years after the Summer of Love (and 30 years after the Summer of Hate), MGMT is celebrating the grand re-opening of the third eye of the world with Oracular Spectacular, an enigmatic and prophetic collection of hallucinatory sounds and hook-riddled Pop tones for the new millennium. MGMT is: Andrew Vanwyngarden and Ben Goldwasser, two psychic pilgrims whose paths first intersected in the green pastures of Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, circa 2002. The pair was drawn to the music of other duos and found themselves incorporating the implications of the hallucinatory power-twee of the Incredible String Band, the roaring subway minimalist Electronica of Suicide, the silky Pop-Soul of Hall & Oates, the pulsing narcotic trance of Spacemen 3, the avant-garde Industrial romanticism of Royal Trux and much more into the constantly evolving sounds of MGMT. This version includes enhanced version of music video, photo gallery, & instructive video. Sony. 2008.

Customer Reviews: Read 89 more reviews...

4 out of 5 stars

A Rush of Memories and Premonitions January 26, 2008
22 out of 23 found this review helpful

I havn't been fascinated by a NYC band this much since Interpol's 2002 release, "Turn on the Bright Lights", which revived the dark sounds of 80's British punk icons Joy Division. Similarly, MGMT's influences are all on the surface, from the early synthpop of Ultravox ("Kids") to Oasis's jangly guitar tunes and laddish vocals ("Pieces of What"). I even heard some Kate Bush. You can lose yourself in tracing the genealogy of their references, but you can also wonder at the musical depth of the deceptive simplicity of their tunes. Someone on the web has written that their music is like Marvin Gaye on ecstacy, and that really hits the mark: I'm reminded of The Klaxon's "New Rave" style of an effortless, senseless helium high, a rush of memories and premonitions, best expressed in a line from the song, "Future Reflections": "It tastes like death but it looks like fun." Is this a vision of the future? I don't know, but don't miss it, and turn the volume up, way up. If we don't know where this band is going, it's best to enjoy the Ride.

2 out of 5 stars

Shallow August 28, 2008
19 out of 65 found this review helpful

First of all, MGMT? Is that "Management?" "Meenage Gutant Minja Turtles?" "Mey Gight Me Tiants?" Beats the hell out of me, and their website ("whoismgmt") is no help, either.

The album title, well, seems to be communicating some sort of remarkable event involving an oracle, or one that is, by inference mystical and difficult to interpret. Me, I think they just thought it sounded clever, and it rhymed, too. The depth of this title was not reflected in the music.

And what is this ridiculous promise of "multi-dimensional vibrating Technicolor sounds?" That's a pretty tall order, and I took up the challenge. I listened, carefully, living with this release in the car for two straight weeks. I heard absolutely nothing that I would characterize as multi-dimensional. I'd reserve that for King Crimson's Beat or Eno's My Life in the Bush of Ghosts. And vibrating Technicolor sound? Well, I heard absolutely nothing that got me close to that. For me, I'd lavish this compliment on Andreas Vollenweider's White Winds or Mark Isham's brilliant, lavish themes for The Cooler.

The album art had me shaking my head before I even got the disc into the player. The front photo is the duo of VanWyngarden and Goldwasser at the beach, tricked out in face paint and tied-on rave-junk, right down to the pathetic lightsticks, bad hair, vacant stares, thin and on so self-importantly trendy (these are shots from the video). The back cover art has them and their art-cool friends throwing flares into the sea, and the inside art has these deeply self-affected artistes all painted, in a studio, setting fire...wait for it...to play money--whoa! I mean, puh-leeze. What a load of stereotypical art-poser glop. Strangely enough, the online art that is generated automatically for your ripped versions of this release is considerably different than that described above.

The website does tell me an awful lot more than the album does, either in the music itself, or in liner notes. The liner notes are a sad and sorry letdown. One side is a big spiral, like an old-timey, cheapo hypnotism prop, and the other side is a genuinely crappy, and ultimately obnoxious run of the songs' lyrics, with no song titles, just jumbled-up bunches of words, in someone's bad, tiny handwriting. Artist: if you're going to offer lyrics, making them legible is a good rule of thumb. What's offered is a condescending, cynical swipe at us as consumers of their product.

(Oh, and by the way, the website is a low-budget mess, pretending at some kind of post-pop art statement. The link to the merchandise works just fine, though.)

Ah, but these wild "mystic pagans," these Connecticut college boys are all about breaking rules, and, y'know, defying stuff, n' all. So where's that in this music? Oh yeah, the music. On almost all tracks, the voices are under and slightly behind the music, and that's because they can't sing. Although, from time to time, early Mick Jagger seems to be the vocal model, thin and pushed. That's an interesting vocal approach, but it does not fit in any way with the music they're making, and the low-rent artsy-techno vibe they are creating. The lyrics are trite and predictable, talking about living fast and dying young, getting jobs in offices, "the kids" this and "the kids" that, etc. No track did anything for me, and believe me, I gave this album plenty of time to grow on me, playing it in my car nonstop for two straight weeks. In the end, I had to flush their music out of my head; an eclectic dose of ...And Out Come the Wolves, Marathon, One-Two Punch and Paint Your Wagon did the trick.

Overall, the entire package comes across as trite. It's predictable electronic pop; all these guys are doing is following a formula. Hell, they go so far as to cop to it on the website. And it's not even good formula. It sounds like a high-school knock-off.

The album's bonus info was weak and lame. The interactive video for "Electric Feel" didn't work, as I couldn't find it on the difficult to navigate interactive front page. It did not come up with the autostart on the CD, and I couldn't uncover a hyperlink to it on the front page. That's poor design, or poor quality control. The tour photo album was ultra-low-budget in production and resolution, just stupid buddy photos, the kind of junk you shoot with your camera phone. The photos from the "Time to Pretend" video shoot were better in resolution, but sad in their amateurish pretense at art. This was not very impressive for product value-added.

These guys recently played the 9:30 Club in Washington, DC, and the Post's Patrick Foster was not impressed, calling them "perfectly good at being bad." He said they "look(ed) and sound(ed) both utterly incompetent and completely catchy." Foster points out, and I'd figured it out even before I read this slam of a review, that MGMT's big "hit," "Time to Pretend," isn't some cynical riff; it's an admission of where they really are. Maybe that's art, but it doesn't come off very well musically. It's all echo and synths, overdone, with the vocals intentionally buried way down in the noise.

Bottom line: I didn't enjoy this music, and didn't enjoy the entire package this "band" is pushing at me. It's not the worst I've ever heard--save that for Redbone Greatest Songs. I can't recommend it.

5 out of 5 stars

One of the Top 5 of 08 February 18, 2008
18 out of 20 found this review helpful

I don't know who the guy is that wrote the editorial review for this album, but he is definitely out to lunch...

I never heard of this band, but I saw the album in my local record store and was intrigued by the cover art. When I arrived home, I immediately went to Amazon.com and listened to some snippets of the songs. They sounded good, but it's hard to get a feel for an entire album just by listening to 30 second clips. So I went ahead and bought the album.

I gave it a once-through. Then a second-through. Then a third-through... I've been listening to this album for about 5 days in a row now and it just gets better every time. The editorial reviewer complained about the variety on the album, but I believe that's one of the strengths. There's definitely something for everyone in this album.

I listen to a lot of indie-rock and this is definitely one of the top albums that has come out in the last few years. I rank it up there with Boxer by The National, Neon Bible by the Arcade Fire, and 23 by Blonde Redhead to name a few. Suffice it to say that this album is definitely in good company.

Now I know this album was released on Columbia, which means it's not necessarily "Indie"... But it was definitely crafted with the indie crowd in mind. It succeeds on many levels and it does so with flying colors.

2 out of 5 stars

A very big record without much substance. May 2, 2008
17 out of 32 found this review helpful

Well, this is an ambitious album. The production is good and there are a lot of elements at work in the music, MGMT are striving for a big sound... big psychedelic retro party music. They got the Flaming Lips producer on board, and there's certainly a small similarity in feel to the music with the Lips, a very big and spacy pop sound. Lyrically, though, there isn't much going on and the most noticeable lyrics are pretty cliche in their 70s glam motifs.
Some of the slower numbers here are pretty good, but the singing is always somewhere close to annoying, except when it's drowned into the mix with effects, like on track 9, which works better.

Mostly, it's a bold attempt at a big sound, but nothing is really clicking for me.

Partly it reminds me of something Perry Ferrell might have worked on, but the poppier frenzied stuff sounds like Rocket Summer gone glam... or something like that big chorus group that wears the white gowns.

A bold attempt at something big, but throwing everything at this record didn't really make anything stick.

2 out of 5 stars

people who know one Aphex Twin song April 6, 2008
14 out of 33 found this review helpful

Immediate, seemingly-shallow lyrics with step-on-your-genitals vocals over sophisticated early era Gary Numan style synth-pop? Here is a list of who will (or already does) dig MGMT: girls, girls on coke at clubs, dudes in tight jeans who think it is acceptable to copulate in club bathrooms with girls on coke, girls who like Erasure, dudes who like Burial, dudes who can pick House and Progressive and Trance out of a lineup, people who think Moby is underrated, people who know one Aphex Twin song, people who claim to love electronica but have never heard of Autechre, people who love Justice, droves of people who like it for all the wrong reasons (see above), critics who want something new but just barely new (see Burial), critics who will, eventually, secretly concede that the disc "has some worthwhile traits" after hating it because so many stupid people like it for the wrong reasons.

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