(Columbia)
RECOMMENDED
Now here's a band that's enjoyed a completely normal, ordinary career trajectory: sardonic earworm dance hits into wildly weird psychedelia into full-blown drugged-out rawk music. MGMT isn't as endearingly bizarre as Congratulations, but it rediscovers the joyful pop smarts in the duo's songcraft. Whereas their second album often resembled Arthur Lee's farther-out work, this one could occasionally pass for David Bowie or -- gulp -- Ram-era Paul McCartney.
It also has some of the most irritating garbage put out under the group's name so far. "Plenty of Girls in the Sea" probably belonged on a gag reel, and the second half generally is where the meandering Roky Erickson imitations go to die. But if any student of psych-rock from Oar to Tame Impala can't get behind "Introspection" and "Your Life Is a Lie," something's amiss; if anyone who dug "Kids" and "Time to Pretend" can't hear the delectable hooks and pleasures of "Cool Song No. 2" and "Alien Days," well, that just proves that unlike Andrew VanWyngarden and Ben Goldwasser, those fans need a beat to survive, and fuck that.
My personal favorite track here -- and possibly the best in their strange catalog -- is the tremendously schlocky "A Good Sadness," which fully gets behind its dirge with a lot of blipping trappy keyboard stuff and thus gathers together every half-baked idea on the album into one inexplicably indelible one. That beats the Willy Wonkaisms of "I Love You Too, Death," but even on such an indulgent moment, I get a kick out of the obvious contrarian impulse and playfulness that drive the MGMT business plan.
Eagerly awaiting their album-length cover of the Beach Boys' Friends. That's where this is going, right!?
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