MGMT

Beyond weird? Yes, but in the best, most deliciously mind-bending of ways. [Oct 2013, p.88]

You might need a strong cuppa to settle your nerves afterwards.

MGMT is truly the sound of two artists in the studio with the goal to entertain no one but themselves.

While the album feels daring all the way through, early tracks like "Alien Days" feel relatively straightforward, mining the ornate pop sound of their previous effort.

MGMT might be an uncomfortable journey at times, but it’s also a transcendental one you’ve never been on before.

Though it features no straightforward pop songs, MGMT finds VanWyngarden and Goldwasser having a great deal of fun creating exactly the kind of eclectic, weird music they want to.

They've managed to step forward into focused recalibration without losing their weekend-warrior identity.

This is an album hard to grasp at first, let alone on second or third listens.

The cosmic expanses of "I Love You Too, Death" and "Astro-Mancy" are particularly engrossing, but this record boasts more than enough quality head trips to keep you in it pull 'til the next go-round. [No. 103, p.57]

They're doubling down on that sound [mad-hatter psychedelic sprawl of 2010's winkingly titled Congratulations] for Album Three, pushing their love of acid-tinged bubblegum right out the back door of the booby hatch, in a good way.

Something’s always looming and buzzing--or burbling, or clattering, or tapping, or ratcheting, or blipping, or quavering--near the foreground throughout MGMT’s third album, MGMT. It makes the album both testing and, eventually, rewarding.

MGMT seem to have settled into their groove here, or more correctly their two concurrent grooves. On one hand, they seem able to produce easily digestible fuzzy pop songs slightly reminiscent of soft rock with what appears to be consummate ease; on the other, they can enter into all manner of sonic digressions with a noteworthy lightness of touch.

The pair unleash a succession of hallucinatory soundscapes that feel hermetically sealed yet confrontational, as if daring us to fire up a fat blunt and allow this sleek beast to burrow into our frontal lobes. [Oct 2013, p.71]

In other words, it’s not MGMT vs. Oracular Spectacular; if anything’s holding MGMT back, it’s themselves.

These ever-changing moods don't make MGMT an easy listen. [Oct 2013, p.105]

Andrew VanWyngarden and Ben Goldwasser's third album again fails to provide a soft pop landing. [Oct 2013, p.96]

On its own merits, it's a decent enough record with some interesting tracks on it, even if they sometimes sound like nicely turned B-sides rather than top drawer material.

Occasionally the band’s vision pays off here.

The tenacity of it all is admirable. But the result, a self-titled rebirth following a hiatus, is a bit of a mess. Still, it’s a thrillingly inventive and uncompromisingly colorful mess, and isn’t that the best kind of mess?

It sometimes meanders like a wasted hipster at an Animal Collective after-show. Yet it preserves enough presence of mind to yield gems such as the sing-song "Alien Days" or the deliquescent "Mystery Disease."

Considering it’s only 44 minutes long, MGMT’s self-titled third album feels much lengthier. This is partly due to the dense layers and constantly shifting textures, but it’s also a result of the abrasive digital distortion shrouding the psych-pop jams, making it a tiring listen even at its most melodic.

If the rest of the album were as strong as those three songs ["A Good Sadness," "Astro-Mancy," and "I Love You Too, Death], this would be a masterpiece and a powerful growth for the band. As it stands, they can at best serve as a taste of what's to come.

MGMT's still reacting to the mainstream triumph of 2008's Oracular Spectacular, trying too hard to sound genuinely weird, as if determined to fail at any cost.

It quickly veers into a curious stream of whim with their most alienating, and unfortunately, their most characterless yet--they deliver an onslaught of acrimonious synths in the post-apocalyptic, jazz-tinged Mystery Disease, while Cool Song No. 2 shamelessly takes a page out of the Can playbook with its grimy, overcompressed effects.

Their reach is admirable, but their grasp is often too weak to truly pull off their ambitions.

An impenetrable, overwrought, hit-and-miss product marred by ego.

Dense, uneasy psychedelia dominates, and although this isn’t a product of wilfully inaccessible experimentation, neither does it contain much in the way of instant melodies and conventional song structures.

Their cavalcade of goopy dross and hippie-dippy navel-gazing takes a left at transcendence and eventually just lets this bloated trip sputter out altogether. [20/27 Sep 2013, p.152]

MGMT is by some margin the New Yorker’s most intuitive, sincere and naturalistic record. The bad news is that it’s not at all musically interesting.

MGMT chokes on its own forced sense of whimsy.

The swampy, claustrophobic MGMT is never as interesting or smart as the crowd-pleasing sing-alongs on Oracular Spectacular.

None of the other songs are as instantly arresting, aside from “Plenty of Girls in the Sea,” which proves to be just as fruitless and repetitive as the aforementioned single.

Another dilettante excursion with little to recommend it. [The Independent scored this a 2/5 in the actual printed edition not 5/5 as seen on its online edition]

A confused, confusing album, MGMT treats contemporaneity as if it were an insulin shot.

Of course groups should look to change and evolve, but this is solipsism at its worst.