MAX’S MUSIC BOX: MGMT’s psychedelic rock struggles to find meaning

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MGMT’s self-titled album came out Sept. 17, 2013. (Photo used with permission of Creative Commons)

After MGMT’s successful song “Kids,” fans have always expected the band to produce entertaining psychedelic rock. However, MGMT’s new self-titled album is sure to disappoint everyone. The album feels like a jumbled selection of songs that all originated from the band’s evident identity crisis. There aren’t any centralized themes as there were in the previous albums. It’s hard to even classify MGMT as an album because of its lack of meaning. Overall, MGMT struggles to sound like an accomplished band; instead, they struggle to maintain the balance between creativity and general appeal.

 

1.     After 15 seconds of “Alien Days,” I already knew what I was in for. The song begins with a dreamy synth followed by a small boy that sings the first verse.  The same typical unnecessary weirdness is prominent throughout the album. Over time, acoustic guitars and drums are slowly added.  Singer Andrew VanWyngarden’s voice is easily recognizable, as he still sings in the same shrill, unique way that people have learned to recognize since Oracular Spectacular.  The song isn’t anything special, and I can’t even begin to try to understand the lyrics. It seems like the song is weird for the sole purpose of being weird. (5.5 pts. out of 10)

2.     “Cool Song No. 2” can be described as annoying, all over the place and nonsensical.  At times, I wasn’t even sure if the piano was playing in the right key.  On top of that, the lyrics don’t seem to have any significance. Maybe the lyrics are just too sophisticated for me to understand with verses like, “What if the beast escapes/and separates like a cloud/ seeps into the hollow bones?” Moreover, the song seems pointless without a chorus or recognizable melody.  The lack of anything relatable, be it the lyrics or a chorus, leaves the song hollow. (5/10)

3.     Most of “Introspection” is just noise. Filled with strange sounds, recorders and a heavy baseline, the song is far from enjoyable. Instead of singing, VanWyngarden maintains a middle ground between speaking and singing.  However, “Introspection’s” lyrics begin to make some sense. VanWyngarden sings, “Introspection, what am I really like inside?/Introspection, why have all the prophets lied?/There’s a season where I’ll find out where I really am.”  It seems that the track highlights some kind of existential identity-esque crisis. However, at this point the album has failed to produce an enjoyable song. (5.5/10)

4.     Throughout “Your Life Is A Lie” the cowbell punctuates each phrase as the dominant instrument. The entire song is composed of two chords accompanied by this extremely repetitive banging cowbell. While simple can be good, the song isn’t creative. It just repeats itself over and over with the meaningless phrase “your life is a lie.”  (5/10)

5.     On my first listen, once I got to “A Good Sadness,” I was exhausted. I had had enough of MGMT’s forced deviation from mainstream music. “A Good Sadness” didn’t help. It was another song that made no sense in any respect.  The computer-generated samples didn’t mesh well at all with the song. By adding a ton of random sounds, MGMT made the song bloated rather than interesting.  It just kept going on and on with its distorted bleeping.  And of course the lyrics didn’t have any real meaning with lines like, “I can still hear the reflections in the air/feeding time/it’s summer over there.”  (4/10)

6.     “Astro-Mancy” is another psychedelic nightmare.  It begins with an intense-sounding drum beat and bass riff.  VanWyngarden sings his experimental lyrics barely above a whisper.  The song, following the album’s pattern, doesn’t develop into anything. It merely seems like a gateway into VanWyngarden’s crazy musical mind. It may make sense to VanWyngarden, but I certainly don’t understand the “music” on his record. (4/10)

7.     “I Love You Too, Death” opens with a random assortment of sounds that don’t add anything to the song itself. A flute plays here and a beep plays there. While these don’t enhance the song in any way, there isn’t much to enhance upon anyway. The songs feel empty with the lack of memorable hooks and lyrics.  There’s nothing to latch onto and just enjoy. MGMT leaves the audience with a few random chord progressions accompanied by a few random sounds. (4/10)

8.     “Plenty Of Girls In The Sea” is one of the better songs on the lackluster record.  The intro is interesting, and VanWyngarden actually sings in the beginning. However, the lyrics remain meaningless.  The song’s first words are, “There are plenty of girls in the sea/there are plenty of seeds in a lemon.” I don’t even begin to understand how the two phrases relate to each other.  (5/10)

9.     With a backing track that belongs in an old sci-fi movie, “An Orphan Of Fortune” wraps up MGMT’s worst album thus far.  After VanWyngarden started singing, the whining noises began to grate in my ears. And for the last time, the song didn’t develop into anything.  By the end of the track, I was simply glad that I had endured the whole album.  Almost every tune is alike in that they aren’t complete songs. Mostly, the album is just a collection of random, weird sounds.

Overall Rating: (4/10)

 

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3 Responses

  1. This review sucks. If you find that the best you can come up with is that a song, “can be described as annoying,” you might want to reconsider whether you’re fit to comment on music. The entire article comes off as some guy off the street with no particular interest in music being forced to write about a style of music he doesn’t like. Which is baffling since MGMT sits among the five artists the author chose to highlight as indicative of his taste in his blurb. One has to assume that he is another one of those who latched his identity to the like of “Kids” and “Weekend Wars” not because of a particular fondness to a music but because it is pop music that one can like while still maintaining to be hip and avant-garde. It’s hard to imagine that anyone who has soaked themselves in Oracular Spectacular and Congratulations would find nothing of merit in this album. Calling the album a “forced deviation from mainstream music” sounds like the author just wants the band to churn out hits to add to his workout playlist. Anyone well versed in MGMT could have predicted the inaccessibility of this album. If the author has so little faith in the band that he would write a scathing review after a single listen (dismissing lyrics as meaningless without a second thought and songs as just noise) and with the sole annoyance that the band not return to their indiepop roots you have to question whether the author has any insight into music deeper than, “This immediately appeals to me. This doesn’t immediately appeal to me.”

    Oh, and Introspection is a cover. Way to research your topic.

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  2. I disagree. I don’t think that the author wants to recreate the sound of Kids and Time to Pretend, but rather the more psych-rock roots of Congratulations and the like.

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  3. Alright, well since this reviewer’s only criticism is “It’s weird and therefore bad.” I’ll do you all a salt and give my own review. I am not a music reviewer, which is probably going to be evident, but I can sure as Shirley do a better job than whoever attempted to review this album (FOR SHAME MAX). I can only speak of this as a fan and it’s likely that I will like some things for the reasons others might not.

    1 ( Alien Days ) Max says this one isn’t anything special, and I think Max is right. By no means is it bad music, but, “weird” and “dreamy” are good ways to describe its tone. It’s a slow and relatively unchanging melody, and I could see how someone who was expecting more might find this one to be droning. However, “weird” and “dreamy” is the entire atmosphere of this album, and so this song fits in perfectly with the kinds of themes present to varying degrees in other songs. And while I still say there are better songs on this album, I still find myself listening to this one from time to time.. (5/10) ( Look max, I gave it a lower score than YOU! :U )

    2. ( Cool Song No. 2 ) This is one of those songs that, when first listened to, doesn’t seem to have a sense of rhythm. I admit I was confused by it on the first hearing. However, there were some parts I liked, so I tended to listen to it, and now I’d say it’s one of the songs I listen to most on this album. The piano was one of the highlights, though I wished it made up a better portion of the song. And so with “weird” and “dreamy”, I’d probably throw in “strange” or “unknown”, which also fits the theme of the lyrics ( that I didn’t actually look up until recently, so it has little to do with my liking for the song itself ). Their music video gives a better sense of the song’s atmosphere. There’s something strange about this track that makes it replayable. ( 7.5/10 )

    3. ( Introspection ) Despite liking this song, I get sick of it easily. It’s a fun and up-beat song with very blunt and easy to understand lyrics ( as illustrated above ), so there isn’t any room for wandering around asking “But what does it mean!?”. I really like that there is a change in tone in-between all the “weird” and “dreamy” in this album, and in that aspect it’s almost like an intermission to give your brain a mindless snack. And that’s why I get sick of it so easily. It’s a good song, it’s just static. It follows the same beat from start to finish, with little variation, so my brain starts to find it boring and I often skip over it if I’ve heard it too recently. ( 5/10 )

    4. ( Your Life is a Lie ) I feel like this could have easily taken Introspection’s place as an upbeat intermission between slower songs. It’s still a static beat, but it’s only two minutes long. While Max says this song is bad because it repeats the same verse, there’s a very obvious point to repeating that verse. It’s an upbeat song with verses like “Your living a lie” “They’re not your friends” “Nobody wins” and “Waiting to die”. Every verse fits this theme so every verse further hammers in the message. You don’t have to look for some deep meaning to figure out what this song is trying to do. But if the lyrics have no impact on you, this is otherwise a very mundane track. (6.5/10)

    5. ( A Good Sadness ) This is one of my favorite tracks on the album. I have no idea what the lyrics are about ( I’ll get to that later ), however, the general theme seems to be revisiting a bittersweet memory ( also evident in the title ), and that also seems to be the tone of the song. I know you’re not fond of the beepy boops, Max, but with lyrics like “Oh my poor memories” “Til you forget that I’m alive” and “Shutting down soon”, perhaps the rush of sounds were placed there to induce some sort of feeling in the listener. …But what sort of feeling? Losing? Leaving? Impending doom? Who knows, Max. I don’t. ( 8.5/10 )

    6. ( Astro-Mancy ) One of my biggest criticisms of this song is the bass. It seems to be set in such a way where it drowns the rest of the song. I don’t know what it is, and it may just be “It sounds bad to me”. Otherwise, it’s okay. Those “weird” and “dreamy” themes are more pronounced here. It follows a pretty mundane beat, the lyrics are barely understandable and seem to only serve as atmosphere. But as the song progresses it starts to sound unsettling, and even the lyrics have an unsettling tone to them. Max describes this one very well, “psychedelic nightmare”. Good job Max, you nailed it. My other criticism is that the song seems unrefined compared to other tracks, almost like they weren’t finished with it (4/10) (Look Max, we tied! )

    7. ( I Love You Too, Death ) Although I was confused by this track at first, this is one of the better songs on this album. As Max stated, it starts off disjointed with seemingly random sounds, but a rhythm builds over the course of the song. It’s a bittersweet guitar melody surrounded by random recorders and later followed with an ominous …bass? drum? deep beep? anyway, it’s a deep booming noise that slowly progresses over the course of the song. It really does give you a sense of dying, or at least doom. And that is what the song is trying to accomplish, so that’s why I like it. It builds up an atmosphere, then it ends. (8.5/10)

    8 ( Plenty of Girls in the Sea ) This is a fun song. It’s another up-beat one, however, it’s far from static. The lyrics are a little more blunt ( Max I don’t understand why you’re trying so hard to find a literal meaning in psychedelic rock lyrics ). The song is simple, but enjoyable. It’s an all-round good song and has a more recognizable song structure, but doesn’t seem out-of-place from the rest of the album. ( 8.5/10 )

    9 ( An Orphan of Fortune ) When I think of psychedelic rock, something like this comes to mind. So I don’t understand what you see wrong in this song, Max, unless the reason is that you don’t like psychedelic rock. You didn’t even rate this one. So I’m going to. It gets a 10, because there’s nothing wrong with it and it’s a good song to end the album on. So take that, Max. ( 10/10/10/10 ) greatjob

    Overall, this is a good album. It’s not my favorite album, but there are quite a few songs I like on it and there are things I like about each song. (7/10)

    What i think the problem here is, Max, is that firstly you are taking the lyrics too literally, and secondly you started listening to this album with a certain expectation (presumably “Kids”) and you didn’t get it. I’m not a die-hard MGMT fan, but I’ve listened to them for a long time and I like them. While I do not actively search for the “true meanings” behind lyrics, the best advice I can give you is MAKE EM UP. Don’t be literal with what they mean. Find out what they mean to you, and if a verse means nothing to you, then all that verse is are words in a song, nothing further. ( I mean, when have you ever felt like a plastic bag? )You cannot criticize a song that does not literally spell out the message it’s trying to send you with its lyrics, else we’d have verses like “THIS SONG IS TRYIN TO MAKE YA FEEL ALONE DO YOU FEEL ALONE YET”. or “DO YOU EVER FEEL, LIKE A PLASTIC BAG, BUT NOT A LITERAL PLASTIC BAG, ITS JUST A METAPHOR” Anyways, Max, don’t get stuck on “But I don’t understand the lyrics!?!” that’s just silly.

    For any of you Boards of Canada fans, this reminds me of when Reach for the Dead came out and every review was negative simply because it was “different” from other albums. a lot of people jumped on the bandwagon that it was bad because the tracks were “confusing” and had a “strange tone”, etc. I had this opinion at first as well. It wasn’t what I was expecting. But I started to revisit tracks and I found some really great stuff, some tracks I’d even consider my favorite of any BoC album so far. And tons of other people had the same opinion. My point is that just like BoC’s newer album review, Max is one of those reviewers who trapped himself in a room and listened to this album all the while thinking “This isn’t what I wanted!!!” Which sadly enough is an opinion I find in people who only listen to “Kids” and expect all of MGMT’s songs to be “Kids”.

    I am not a music reviewer, nor am I one of those people who holds every MGMT verse in the air with golden quotations praising the musical genius of some of their lyrics. I’m just a listener and this is what I think of these songs. But I can guarantee that my amateur music reviewer skills give a better review of this album because unlike Max, I listened to all these songs without some preconceived expectation and did not criticize them solely based on the fact that I don’t understand what the lyrics really mean.

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