mgmt - oracular spectacular

(Missed my Friday post because of that Blogger login bug that was going around. My apologies.)

I'm not completely opposed to the use of deception in music. I listen to plenty of rappers whose stories of drug deals and careless murder are almost certainly fake. I love all those mean-spirited punk records by bands like the Sex Pistols, even though the guys themselves were practically teddy bears. Kanye West isn't even really a person anymore, but I like him just fine too.

But for some reason, MGMT just rubs me the wrong way.

I've always loved "Time to Pretend," but beyond that, I was always weary of jumping on the MGMT bandwagon. Oracular Spectacular was absolutely everywhere in 2007, sucking fans from all corners of the musical spectrum into their void, even sparking fashion movements based on their pseudo-hippie attire. But somewhere along the way, the fact that they were just fucking with us all got lost in the noise.

Andrew and Ben make no attempt to hide their beginnings: they started out playing music to piss off their friends, and somehow they ended up getting signed to Columbia. And aside from "Time to Pretend," the music itself reflects that fact.

These guys piss and shit great pop songs. That much is undeniable at this point. But the end results still reek of the piss and shit they came from, almost like they aren't trying to hide it--which they aren't. To the untrained ear, "Weekend Wars" and "Kids" are just solid little synthpop singles. They're fun to dance and sing to, la la la, who gives a shit beyond that. But in truth, they're fucking unbearable.

"Kids" is the biggest offender of them all, and I have to admit I fell for their sick ways the first five or six times through. But in reality it's just a terrible, terrible song, written in ways that only fans of terrible, terrible songs can enjoy.

By my count, the following stanza is repeated twelve times at the end of this song:

"Control yourself

Take only what you need from it

A family of trees wanted to be haunted"

What in the ever-living fuck does that mean? Being haunted sucks, why would anybody bring that upon themselves? Are these trees being haunted by tree ghosts, or human ghosts? How are MGMT speaking to trees? Assuming they're addressing the "Kids," why do they need to control themselves? They're fucking kids, let them be. Aren't you hippies supposed to be all about that shit?

To make things ever more confusing, the Internet can't seem to decided whether MGMT uses the word "wanted," "wanting," or "wantin'"--all of which present an entirely different meaning to the line, which makes no fucking sense to begin with.

Yet you'll find this song played at a hundred million parties around the world at any given second, with people ages enjoying the tune to an outright delightful extent.

I'll be honest, even I add "Kids" to party playlists when I need to please the masses and make sure no one unplugs my iPod (it tends to buy me an Oblivians song or two), because the masses fucking eat this shit up. There are probably millions of people who wish this song repeated that chorus a few more times, because they love it and the line about trees wanting to be haunted serves as a perfect metaphor for the pseudo-problems that haunt their made-up lives.

The worst part? MGMT completely did this on purpose. They write these songs with such bullshit finesse and a perfect sense of how much watered-down avant-garde the public can tolerate that it makes me sick. (Lady Gaga upped that ante a year later, but that's a whole different story.) The whole album sounds like two slightly-stoned pretentious college kids dressed like hippies flipping me off and fucking with some old Flaming Lips keyboards while a gang of 15 year-olds dance around them and shower them with money.

They're evil fucking geniuses and they know it. I feel like deleting this album would be a personal victory for them, so I'm keeping it around to listen to another day. Somehow I feel like I'm still losing.