360 Staff Pick: MGMT Goes All In

The electro-rock duo MGMT (Ben Goldwasser and Andrew VanWyngarden) has reinvented itself on their sophomore effort, Congratulations, which comes out next Tuesday, April 13.

Just when I thought nothing could be weirder than the cover art of the new album (a two-headed chimpanzee surfing out of the mouth of a green cat??) the band releases the music video for ‘Flash Delirium,’ a non-single off the CD. The video pelts images of clowns, backlit ventriloquists, mushroom clouds, and a science experiment gone very wrong on the level of the 1986 film ‘Aliens.’

I call it ‘a non-single’ because, unlike the band’s poppy debut album Oracular Spectacular and its hipster hits ‘Kids‘ and ‘Time to Pretend,’ this new CD tries to buck the singles-driven music culture. Goldwasser explained to NME.com, ‘We’d rather people hear the whole album as an album and see what tracks jump out rather than the ones that get played on the radio — if anything gets played on the radio!’

You can stream the entire album for free on the band’s official site. While I applaud their effort, I can’t help but wonder if it’s all in vain. I can’t see that their one CD will bring a sea-change. Aren’t the bygone days of listening to records in their entirety in the past?