Take only what you need from it

If you’re anything like the clued-up pulse-gropers we are, you’ll have been ‘hammering’ the MGMT album pretty much all year. Or maybe Edith Bowman told you to like it while you were watching Glastonbury, it doesn’t matter. What matters is that the album is amazing.

Today (July 28th - note it down) was what Michael Fish used to call a “fucking cracker” weatherwise and we took ‘Oracular Spectacular’ outside for a little listen to celebrate. It sounded so good that there were moments when we honestly wouldn’t have cared if the world had ended. It’s a heart-expanding symphony of technicolour textures that incites warm fuzzy feelings and makes even small things like pretty flowers seem Deeply Significant and Important. (Please note we have not been taking drugs.)

One of our favourite songs on the album (which is a bit like choosing your favourite orgasm from the past week) is ‘Kids’, the massive ‘n’ pounding electro behemoth that sits in the middle of the record. ‘Kids’ has been around for YEARS (since around 2003, when the band were still known as ‘The Management’) and has been the subject of many demoings, recordings, mixes and remixes in its half-decade life.

Beginning as a synthy little number that sounds like two hippy kids knocking out some half-baked electro that accidentally turns out to be amazing (the original), the track went through various changes, including the addition of a floor-friendly coda (Afterschool Dance Megamix) and keyboard harmonies that sound like incidental music from 90s television (Time To Pretend EP version) before becoming the brutal bugger we know and love.

NOTE: We found all this out on this blog, by the way, before anyone starts accusing us of doing a Raj Persaud (is it possible to copy a copycat? If ’The Pigeon Detectives’ make terrible Britrock records that are based on songs by The View that are influenced by Libertines b-sides, who has really been copied?)

If you haven’t heard the MGMT album yet, go and buy it tomorrow. If you own it, play it tonight. If illegal MP3s of it are sitting dormant on your computer, fire them up (but be careful, Feargal Sharkey’s looking for you and he isn’t best pleased). You won’t regret it.

BONUS FACTS!
:: ‘MGMT’ is not, as some believe, the name of a trendy New York drug cocktail.
:: It is actually a type of hospital 'superbug'.
:: Among people campaigning for MGMT to name their double act after themselves (effectively becoming ‘Goldwasser and VanWyngarden‘) were Paul Simon, of Simon and Garfunkel fame and Allen out of Foster and Allen.
:: But they would say that.
:: Did we mention that the album is amazing.
:: It does ‘tail off’ a bit, though.

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