Mgmt - Oracular Spectacular Album Review

MGMT
Oracular Spectacular
Columbia Records
Album Review

Oracular Spectacular leaves a lingering scent of times gone by. Notes of glam-era Bowie, a delicate hint of Marc Bolan are bound by lyrics clamouring for free love and unity and all those things we'd all lost sight of by the time the 1970s had rolled on by. Essentially, though, MGMT fit in best with the indie-electro crossover scene that permeates our confused and fractured dancefloors.

It's no surprise that these guys hail from Brooklyn, with its reputation for churning out slightly precocious, slightly pretentious art-noise dance bands. This is unashamedly experimental, yet desperately pop-concious. 'Kids' is rabble-rousing, a call to arms and a potential anthem for disenfranchised youths looking for some purpose, or message to guide them through this bewildering world. The album veers off merrily into psychedelic passages, reigned in by an obvious love of a hook-line. It's an incoherent album but delightfully so. MGMT are hard to pin down, they defy the confines of genre and subculture, glancing through a lifetime of influences, a flip-book of musical history from Pink Floyd to Mstrkrft. You could do worse than educate yourself with their take on it all.

Hayley Avron