MGMT – Oracular Spectacular (Vinyl)

Songs for anyone who’s “going through daily life feeling like an alien,” MGMT draws seasoned fans and new initiates alike into the band’s eureka zone, a psychic oasis offering the opposite of dumbed-down (smarted-up?) as sympathetic counsel or support for something like chronic mis-aligned-multiple-reality syndrome, Deja Vu-DO or Modern malaise – whatever you want to call it. With their resplendent third album, Ben and Andrew finally open up the MGMT inner sanctum through a brand-new sound that’s about what it’s all about: “sinking in – and forgetting about time.” With these ten irreducible new tracks, Andrew and Ben have significantly enhanced the MGMT catalog, definitively shattering any remnants of creative confines or stylistic pigeon holes, while continuing a pattern of naming a record years before new music exists (they’d christened their second album Congratulations before their first, Oracular Spectacular, had even been released). Both minimal and maximal, MGMT is the band’s most fully-realized, provocative and accessible collection to-date; a dense swirling force-field of musical energies, once again shoving open the perimeters of pop.