MGMT Stream New Album

Following the now seemingly inevitable leak of MGMT's new album, Congratulations, over the weekend, the band have opted to stream the record in its entirety via their site: http://www.whoismgmt.com/

The band offered this simple statement:
"Hey everybody, the album leaked, and we wanted you to be able to hear it from us. We wanted to offer it as a free download but that didn't make sense to anyone but us."

Presumably, the reason for the stream is to prevent poor quality versions of the album showing up left, right and centre and skewing the opinions of the masses who have been waiting in anticipation for quite some time now.

It is a move that is becoming more and more popular among artists and one that I feel is to be commended. It is all too easy to come across torrents and rapidshare files of almost all new releases online nowadays (e.g. I attempted to search "dirty projectors tour dates" over the weekend, got as far as "dirty projectors t" and google was offering me torrents, while a search for the discography of almost any band will return rapidshare and torrents rather than an article on their works.) Quite often these rips are poor and streaming music in this manner seems to be the best way to get around it.

Anyway after one listen I can say that Congratulations is an okay record but no more than that. It is difficult to pin down any record after just one listen though so I am going to give it another few goes before I offer a full review.

I can't help but feel that the whole affair is rather forced. The Brooklyn boys are trying to emulate the Flaming Lips, providing experimental and psychedelic rhythms, while retaining a little bit of a pop base. Unfortunately in the last 2 years we have seen two records that have accomplished this better than the Lips ever achieved (Yeasayer's Odd Blood and Animal Collective's Merriweather Post Pavilion), and should MGMT want to be remembered in this group they will need to up the ante. There are heavy Beach Boys vibes floating through this again in a similar vein to the debut, though the infectious pop that garnered so much well deserved attention for Oracular Spectacular.

That's all I'm going to say on it today anyway! I'll be back during the week with a full review I'd imagine.

Check out Congratulations on http://www.whoismgmt.com/