MGMT - Congratulations

How a band can stop being the most hyped from the United States? It´s simple: avoiding any successful formula. Leaving behind the sound of their debut album, MGMT have just published something completely different from what everyone expected: a psychedelic opera. The stakes are very daring and the most interesting of all is that they stand out well.

From the very first issue there´s a feel of renewal. It's Working has a changing shape, and with an attractive variety of textures and intensity, escapes from any kind of structure. It´s impossible to distinguish between verses or choruses, there´re only musical passages that bind each other. It sounds very much like the B side of Oracular Spectacular, Metanoia, mostly because of the changes that appear through the melody. This resource is repeated in the captivating Flash Delirium and in Siberian Breaks, an ecstasy of twelve minutes that for some moments sounds electrifying but during other ones falls a bit.


All the album is an unit and that explains why they decided not to publish singles. Songs reach complete sense when they´re are played one after the other. For example, I Found a Whistle, a spectacular cosmic ballad counteracts the Flash Delirium explosive ending, and that lysergic seesaw of feelings is the main attraction of Congratulations.

"We're never going to be like The Rolling Stones," said once the duo and that is what we make clear here. Where´s the difference? They aborted the easiest option -start writing for the audience- and preferred to continue doing it for them. It´s clear that they didn´t feel very comfortable with that style of life they imagined in Time To Pretend. At the end, Congratulations, one of the most beautiful songs, expresses that disagreement with an emotional letter. The title, that word they listened so many times, is rhetorical. Yes, self-congratulations. Not for the previous success, but for what they have just achieved: a self-sizes album that makes clear that in adfition to good taste they have lot of versatility. Congratulations for them!

The Morning Benders - Big Echo

It ´s important to start saying that this album was co-produced by Chris Taylor, bassist and producer of Grizzly Bear. With that clarification made, I can skip the part where I try to explain that kind of melancholy that lives in every reverberation or how percussions makes Big Echo songs seem part of a great ritual to which we are lending our ears. In this second album, the band led by Chris Chu finished shapping their ideas. While their debut, Talking Through Tin Cans, showed the ease of doing poppy songs pretty interesting, here we have a clear evolution, a search of greater complexity in the compositions. They don´t sound like some happy guys from California anymore. And this is revealed in the first seconds of Excuses, a penetrating song, mixture of sadness and gray day, that starring some orchestras and choirs flags up this new territory with cavern sound that fits so well for them.
 
The work shows its charismatic side with songs like Cold War or All Day Day Light, gets a bit dark and difficult to listen in others (Hand Me Downs), and reaches a mesmerizing climate in slow tempo tracks like Wet Cement Stitches and Pleasure Sighs, which has that kind of schizophrenia generated by guitar arpeggios that suddenly turn into walls of distortion.
 
The Morning Benders found on Taylors´s production the missing link to give an identity to their songs. It´s clear that they also grew up musically and more accurate test of this is called Big Echo, a huge record where each listening means rediscovery.

Four Tet - There is Love in You

Four years passed since Four Tet published his last album, Everything Ecstatic. The wait was not in vain. Kieran Hebden (the person behind the sound) used that time to try and experience as a resident DJ at the Plastic People Club in London. The result is this slow techno album that moves through different climates, proving textures and hypnotizing anyone who gets in its way.
 

Although songs are placed in a quite minimalist sound, they experience several metamorphoses. That's why some long tracks like Love Cry (9:13) or Sing (6:49) can be catchy and never  become repetitive or boring.
 
Four Tet is not another electronic artist,  his music is constantly innovating. Beats and bars are quite traditional but the sounds that appear are captivating. Voice samples, alien noises and acoustic instruments are the perfect condiment for those electronic sounds. Techno music is a bit like salads. You know, they can be very boring but if they are well seasoned they become irresistible. And that´s how There is Love in You tastes, like a well-seasoned salad.