494: MGMT — Oracular Spectacular (2007, Columbia)

Overall rating: 3.5

Level of prior familiarity: 3 (I’ve listened to the singles, but never the album, and I’ve seen the band live)

How I listened: Via Spotify, on my Amazon Echo

The hits!

I never really liked MGMT all that much. I feel like you could interchangably put any one of their songs behind an episode of Girls and it would work in nearly any scene. They pretty much define hipsterism for me. I mean, would you look at that album cover?

But damn, this album’s got hits. I sort of forgot how big these were. I could hum the melody and that catchy-ass synth hook on “Time To Pretend” without flinching, but I didn’t even know the name of the song until I listened through the album. “Electric Feel” was enough to get me to visit the Mojave Tent at Coachella in 2008 to watch a zillion half-naked teenagers get their MDMA with MGMT (for the record, I didn’t really like the show). And “Kids” was the anthem of the late 2000s.

The singles still hold up, but I was surprised to enjoy the rest of this album as well. It’s cohesive in a way few albums are lately, and their sound — for better or worse–was definitive, an inventive mix of lo-fi vocal recordings, repetitious synth hooks, 80s throwback reverb, overly-simplistic drum beats, and brick-wall compression on pretty much everything.

If you haven’t listened to this album, as I hadn’t, it’s time you give it a shot. I don’t think I’m gonna be coming back to it all that often, but I’m glad I finally gave this full album the chance it deserved.