The group returns with a new album this year, but without any single releases.By Kyle Anderson
MGMT Photo: Sony/Columbia
It's hard to believe that Oracular Spectacular, the breakout album from Brooklyn psychedelic dance duo MGMT, originally came out way back in 2007, simply because it still remains inescapable today. Andrew Van Wyngarden and Ben Goldwasser have spent the past few years riding the wave of their infectious, fuzzy grooves to platinum success, and the irresistibility of the smash singles "Time to Pretend" and "Kids" has brought them major spots on high-profile festivals, a pair of Grammy nominations and praise from bloggers and soccer moms alike.
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So what will the pair do for an encore? It's called Congratulations and, according to Van Wyngarden, it's in the can and waiting to be unleashed on the masses (which will be sometime in the spring).
"It's definitely going to shock people," Van Wyngarden told Spin. "In a weird way, it's like a soul record."
The group promises that it will be a more complete album — in fact, they are so confident in its existence as a whole that they won't be releasing any singles from it. "There definitely isn't a 'Time To Pretend' or a 'Kids' on the album," Goldwasser told NME. "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."
Like Oracular Spectacular, the new album got a healthy dose of production help from David Fridmann (The Flaming Lips, OK Go), and this time around they brought in Spacemen 3 co-founder Pete Kember, who will no doubt lend even more fuzz and exploration to the proceedings.
As for the lyrics, there are plenty more explorations of the psyche (and the chemical effects thereof), but there's also a healthy bit on surfing. In Brooklyn? "When we were making the first record, I didn't surf," Van Wyngarden told Spin. "But for whatever reason, I was dreaming about waves and surfing for about a year straight — so that made it into the lyrics and the imagery of the record. Then about a year ago, when we were recording Congratulations in Malibu, I started surfing. It's definitely a theme. There's one song called 'Siberian Breaks' and it's about 12 minutes long. The general theme is about surfing in the Arctic Circle by Russia."
All that, and you can dance to it? Sounds like a recipe for spaced-out, head-nodding greatness, which is why we think Congratulations will be one of the key rock releases of 2010.
It's Rock Week at MTV News, and to celebrate, we're taking a look at some of the most-anticipated new albums and bands of 2010. Stay tuned all week for more!
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