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Even at its most melancholic, “Go” is always more wistful than mournful. “Grow Till Tall,” the album’s longest track, is a meandering, spare number that constantly threatens to build to a crashing, desolate conclusion—in a manner reminiscent of many of Sigur Ros’ best songs—but never actually does so. Instead, it underpins Birgisson’s nostalgic wailing with a couple of whining violins and jittering electronics, ensuring lyrics like “You’ll really want...
It’s rare that the final track of an album is its most telling, but Brooklyn-based alternative rock band MGMT’s sophomore release, “Congratulations,” achieves just that with its title track; an acoustic ode to success and the acclam that accompanies it. The song, much like their debut album’s opener, “Time To Pretend,” is puzzlingly ironic, in that one is pretty sure it is ironic, but can only guess to what extent. Whereas “Time to Pretend?...
...work meant to be heard in one continuous sitting. As such, “Congratulations” contains no songs that come close to the New Order-inspired thrills of “Kids;” in fact, it’s hard to imagine a single track off this album making its way anywhere near a dance floor. Nevertheless, it succeeds in cohering as a thoroughly engaging and rewarding second album...
Stylistically, “Congratulations” does not diverge from many of the album tracks on “Oracular Spectacular.” The 1970s prog rock and ambient music that inspired “Weekend Wars” and “The Handshake” are the key touchstones on this record. Heck, “Congratulations” even has a track called “Brian Eno”—one of the album’s more straightforward cuts, avoiding the numerous shifts in style that define most of the tracks...
Take, for instance, “Flash Delirium,” the closest the album has to a single. Released a few weeks ago as a free download, like many of the tracks on “Congratulations,” it is a smorgasbord of styles. At one moment it seems like the successor to the synthpop groove of “Time to Pretend,” but within seconds it shifts to a guitar melody with a heavy walking bassline, eventually arriving at an atmospheric conglomeration of multiple vocal lines and ringing synths. During the song?...