Staples-MGMT

So, I was trying to figure out a way to write about music that I love but that isn't current, and I think I'm going to do it on Fridays and call it "Staples." As in, this is a staple of my music collection. Something that I go back to again and again, for whatever reason. First up: MGMT's Oracular Spectacular.

It's fitting that this is on a Friday. When I first moved to D.C. a little more than two years ago (I've since relocated back to NC), things were...interesting, we'll say. I was poorer then than I am now, even though I am currently without trabajo. I was working a day job that didn't pay and two other jobs at night and on the weekend to try and make ends meet, which they didn't, because D.C. is insanely expensive in every way.[1. I'll stop there with the D.C. rant for now, but just know that I could go on for hours. Ok, well, one more thing. At the time I was paying $800 a month to live in a glorified closet that didn't have a door and was sleeping on an air mattress.] But on Fridays, I allowed myself a little latitude, treating myself to a latte from Chinatown Coffee.[1. I would kill for one of those now. It is the best latte I think I've ever had. And one of the few places worth visiting in Chinatown.] I would set out for my 30-40 minute walk to work with coffee in hand, strolling in the perfect fall weather, with MGMT on my Ipod, and descend into bliss.[1. I'm only a little sad that Fridays don't really have the same meaning, now that I'm unemployed and all.]



Sure, part of the bliss was the caffeine high from the latte and the realization that I was only a few hours away from $1 beers at the Bottom Line, but part of it was the brilliance of Oracular Spectacular. The highs on the record are immense. I'm guessing you, reader, haven't thought about MGMT in a while, and that's normal. Oracular Spectacular was released in 2008, and was played to death. Every time I went out, I heard "Kids" or "Electric Feel" or "Time to Pretend." I think I heard "Kids" played at the Busy Bee 14 times and I only went there 8. Then, in 2010, MGMT released Congratulations, a bloated whale of an album with one good song (let me introduce you to "Someone's Missing"). In effect, everyone was sick of the songs they liked and when the new record that was supposed to give everyone new songs to obsess over and play incessantly at bars while young men with bad haircuts and whose dreams were to sell clever t-shirts for a living made ill-advised and ill-fated plays for nihilistic young women with worse haircuts, it didn't.



But shit man, three songs on one record that are that catchy and fun in a way that everyone can enjoy, that must be good right? (Yes, you should be nodding your head now) Sure, they were overplayed at the time, but overplayed for a reason. So you have three veritable "hits" but what else? Well, a bunch of other great songs that you're weren't going to hear at your local bar but you should have listened to anyway. There's the sheer intelligence and humor of "Weekend Wars," a song that's ostensibly about how hard it is to manage to do nothing on the weekend ("it's difficult to win unless you're bored"). There's the glorious climax at the end of "Pieces of What." There's the fist-pounding chorus of "The Handshake.". And there's the manic closure of "Future Reflections." None of these songs retain the pace of the aforementioned "hits," but they provide the record with depth and contrast, making Oracular Spectacular something worth listening to the whole way through, nearly four years since its original release.