I'm in Management
I really like this management band for a few reasons. First, they play super cool alternative rock that I can quote to my country music friends to make them sound all stupid and stuff. I'm in management for my company so I can relate to what these cats are speaking about. There are times where Bob will call a 9am roundtable about garble reports and I'll just yell at him that it's time to pretend. When it's time to pretend, I pretend my office is a 17th century castle and I'm the King. I declare war on the other offices around me and go around passing gas in them. They don't like it, but I'm an awesome mammal.

There are songs on this I don't get, but let me clue you in on a little secret. I lack the intelligence needed to comprehend many things. I'm totally awesome and good looking, so I've moved up the corporate ladder. I make enough money to buy my band asschowder new instruments every crescent moon. We tour arby's locations throughout Iowa with wholesome angst polka. Average pulled me over and asked me directions to runza last week and I said, "I don't deal with you."

Ahh, what can I say?
I first heard of MGMT on a local radio station. "Time to Pretend" started off strangely, and I fell in love with it. My 4-year old daughter loved their songs. Kids was catchy and addictive. I really love it when an album unexpectedly excites and interests me. I think MGMT has a winning formula, and I can't wait for their next album...

MGMT - Oracular Spectacular
Oracular Spectacular (2008, Red Ink) MGMT's first studio album. ****

The neo-psychedelia duo MGMT (made up of Ben Goldwasser and Andrew VanWyngarden) could have released a classic album. They could have. In fact, for a while, it seemed like they had done it; the first half of Oracular Spectacular, their debut album, it seems like MGMT have crafted something perfect.

The reality is, the Oracular Spectacular is lopsided, with all the beautiful gems showing themselves in the first half, and literally only the first half. With ten songs, "Time to Pretend" through "Kids" is a whirlwind of influences and originality, cleverly warped into one body and garnished with some very impressive and astute lyrics. "Time to Pretend" sounds like a lost anthem of a generation, a mix between the rebellion against the status quo of suburban life, yet yields the tragic consequences of the "live fast, die young" rock mentality. It's an eclectic blend of alternative pop as well as 60's pop. The true anthem, though, is "The Youth," with its beautiful and minimalist approach, the gorgeous falsetto as MGMT ask an important question; "The Youth are starting to change/Are you starting to change?" It is a testament to John Lennon's "Give Peace a Chance" or "Imagine." The Beatles landscapes of "Weekend Wars," the disco beat and BeeJees stylings of "Electric Feel," and the alternative dance of "Kids" are all outstanding pieces. And it is on "Time to Pretend" and "Kids" where MGMT sounds at their most original, regardless of how well their influences play on others.

Despite all that, the second half of the album slips, starting immediately with "4th Dimensional Transition," steeped heavily in Middle Eastern and even rolling wild west approaches. "Pieces of What" fails to establish the hook it is looking for, and while none of the remaining songs are bad, they're certainly not what was promised in the album's opening act. Still, MGMT have proved that they are masters of neo-psychedlia, and perhaps a bit of time on the road will allow them to pen a few more ridiculously good tunes. (Time to Pretend, The Youth, Electric Feel)

Shallow
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.

funky flaming lips -- shame about the singing though
These tracks sound more than just a little like The Flaming Lips and that is not a bad thing at all. There's a creative energy from beginning to end and the band clearly has a sense of humor. So....I like this CD but personally I have a short tolerance for male falsetto singing (its too often a way to hide that the singer cannot actually carry a tune). Since every track has this high-pitched one-tone singing, the CD gets a few giant demerits. Please guys, try to actually sing on your next CD or just make funky instrumentals?