8.5/10
This album was definitely a grower. It took at least 5 or 6 listens before I was really able to get into every track. Abstract albums like this generally seem to be that way. After the surprise commercial success of their last album, Oracular Spectacular, MGMT went in the opposite direction that everyone expected them to. There are no tracks on the new album anywhere near as catchy and poppy as Kids or Electric Feel. While this might be a little disappointing, I still really like the album. It's not supposed to be catchy and mainstream. The band specifically didn't want to release singles to encourage people to listen to the full album rather than just a couple of songs. As someone who never puts his iPod on shuffle, and really values the "full album" experience, I loved this about them. Sure they could have taken the easy way out and made a few more Kids-esque songs without much thought and made a ton of money. But they really care about the music and didn't want to do that. Instead, they made an abstract, more psychadelic album with no real standout singles or catchy choruses. Sure it made it a little hard to get into, but it was worth it. I think it's a great album.
The songs all flow together really well, regardless of how different they are. It shows how serious they were about stressing the album as one big work of art rather than just a collection of songs. While I do like a lot of the lyrics, most of them aren't particularly noteworthy. They aren't bad by any means, they just don't stand out. The real treat is the music: the guitars, the drums, the synths. They're great. The way that the 12-minute Siberian Breaks can totally captivate you, and transition between 3 different sections, is a testment to this. It's hard to keep someone's attention for the entirety of a 12-minute song. Lady Dada's Nightmare is an instrumental, and I think one of the best tracks on the album. It's so much darker than anything I've ever heard from MGMT, but I think it worked really well. And to transition that into one of the brightest, happiest songs on the album, Congratulations, seems difficult, but they make it look easy.
I guess I do miss the catchy, irresistable songs from the last album, but at the same time I also love it when artists try something totally different and succeed. While I know this album won't have the same replay value or lasting qualities of the first, I think its more consistent as a whole. They definitely succeeded in creating one large body of work. I can't even bring myself to pick a favorite track. They are all really good in different ways. I suppose I would go with "Brian Eno" and "Congratulations", but to say that those 2 are "better" than the others would be unfair.
