KEY POINTS:
MGMT
Oracular Spectacular
(Columbia)
Herald Rating: * * * *
Verdict: Brooklyn electronic rock duo give off sparks on dreamy debut
It took bands like The Flaming Lips - MGMT's natural predecessors with whom they share a producer in Mercury Rev's Dave Fridmann - years to find a way to glue decent tunes to their grand musical visions.
But the Brooklyn-based duo of Ben Goldwasser and Andrew Vanwyngarden seem to have found where the hooks are kept early in their career. And it's those tunes that is the making of their first genre-mashing electro-psychedelic outing.
MGMT seem to have a found a way of making it sound effortlessly, sweetly tuneful and warping pop history to their own weird whims. That's right from the indelible opener Time to Pretend (a very Lips-ish track pondering the hazards of the rock 'n' roll lifestyle), through the falsetto funk of Electric Feel, the grand synthesised Kids, the 60s pop baroque of The Youth to the country-rock of Pieces of What.
They can sound a little like Ween around the edges and it is hard to take them seriously - especially when the psychedelic nuttiness gets the better of the tunes on the likes of later tracks like 4th Dimensional Transition and the closing Future Reflections.
Mostly, Oracular Spectacular is a kaleidoscopic wonder.
