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Even from February, MGMT was even more of a hotter band as the summer and they had a fraction of their popularity before their physical release of Oracular Spectacular in January.

So do I still refuse to like them? Yes.

They still annoy me with their look and their popularity dumbfounds me but whoever are the men (I’m not sexist) behind promoting MGMT have done a fabulous job. From well timed remixes just as you thought as the hype died down, now to potentially new MGMT tracks and news regarding their work with the Chemical Bros.

The goal with this review was ultimately to become a better reviewer, not to just hate a band for the sake of hating a band (there’s a lot to hate here btw) and just look at reviewing the music.

Oracular Spectacular begins with Time To Pretend a very catchy song with a cool little synth number that serves as their hook. I actually liked this song from the beginning, but other then from the hook there really isn’t too much to like. Unless you like one of those typical song themes which are generic in nature about people pretending to being more then something, doing drugs and living the dream etc. Not a bad song though.

One of the criticisms that I had of MGMT from the beginning was that they weren’t so creative/psychedelic or simply that good of a band to merit all this success. I think you can hear it on a song like Weekend Wars, which is different from their good tracks and it doesn’t really rely on any strength. I think it’s because it’s not fundamentally complex singing wise and the use of electronics doesn’t really fit well. It does have a decent moment for 30 seconds near the end when the singing becomes rangy and they use a much higher voice.

They do have some great hits though. I’m not afraid to say that, it’s justified with the hype as Kids and Electric Feel are great pop songs. Not great in comparison to many other rock songs but it’s fair to say that I can see why this has a lot of the crowds excited about MGMT.

This album does have its hits but it is severely flawed. The vocals tend to waver on and off, at some points they are very good and other times very disappointing. I find the second half on the album (the section devoid of the hits) to be that way. There is some experimentation on the album, which I’ll refer to as ambitious. The effort is there… but I found myself disliking their experimentation. My consensus is that they are not yet good enough to make extremely creative songs and they do need to use synths and other electronic elements to mask their lack of vocal prowess and other instrumentation.

It also serves mention that if you don’t like their pop songs, there isn’t much else to go on. They aren’t going to blow you away with anything else. If you do hate them you’ll probably agree with my post in February because their success has been out of their world and I don’t personally understand it either.

Tons of misses here but not as bad as I’m probably leading you on. If it wasn’t for their success, I probably wouldn’t have bothered but I still think it’s important to look at band you don’t like to just see if you can come up with a piece without the bias. How did I do?

Rating: 2.75 out of 5
MGMT has some great pop songs, I still hate them but they do at least try to be creative… As for their personalities, I still kind of feel that they are a little over the top and ingenuine (character wise) or they are just fucking weird. – No I don’t want to draw up a few quotes.

Kids by MGMT

Electric Feel by MGMT

Tags: album