Send "MGMT " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Bbc |
 Late Night Tales allows Benjamin Goldwasser and Andrew VanWyngarden to indulge their tastes, and offers perhaps the truest possible representation of the sounds inside the pair’s heads, in case anyone was still thinking Congratulations was a deliberate fan-shedding exercise. So, while they’re currently in the studio coming up with some choruses for album three (the record company have, apparently, "had words" after Congratulations remained nailed to the shelves), they’ve offered up this mixtape type release to give fans a fuller picture of the MGMT experience.With choices from the some-of-these-people-may-be-on-something area of pop history, there’s the likes of The Chills, Television Personalities and Disco Inferno nestling alongside The Velvet Underground’s Ocean and a cut from Felt’s full-on Cocteau Twins phase, Red Indians. Martin Rev and Suicide crop up with the menace-haemorrhaging Cheree and slightly more upbeat Sparks, while Julian Cope’s Laughing Boy, from his own disowning pop era masterpiece Fried, is a welcome selection. You listen to it and can’t quite imagine that, literally two years beforehand, Duran Duran were claiming The Teardrop Explodes were their only competition. Charlie Feathers’ Mound of Clay sees the rockabilly giant in a mellower frame of mind, while the gorgeously meditative Lord Can You Hear Me? may represent the first time the Late Night Tales series has had to clear a Spacemen 3 track, but it fills the criteria perfectly. As tradition dictates with Late Night Tales, the curators thrown in an exclusive track from themselves, and here MGMT opt for a cover of Bauhaus’ All We Ever Wanted Was Everything, originally from the dark gents’ The Sky’s Gone Out opus. It’s fair to say that, while it’s actually very lovely, it’s proof that MGMT probably don’t have ‘become pop stars’ noted on their career to-do list. To close there is a short story read by Paul Morley, without one mention of Joy Division....full text |
| Hangout |
| Late Night Tales is a compilation series that is to soon release their twenty sixth compilation; one of the tracks being from the popular band, MGMT. With MGMT being a part of this compilation series, it is generating anticipation and excitement for the release of this album on October 3, 2011. From Brooklyn, New York, Andrew VanWyngarden and Ben Goldwasser formed MGMT in the year of 2002. In 2008, Oracular Spectacular debuted consisting of singles such as “Time to Pretend” and “Kids”, followed by "Congratulations", where some seem to believe that their music advanced, taking us to today with their soon to be released Late Night Tales. Late Night Tales is a variety selection containing both indie and soft rock. This album is almost like having someone whispering into your ear while cradling you to sleep. It is soft and soothing, and should not be listened to in the car while making a long trip because this album will make you utterly relaxed. Now, we all know that MGMT reigns over emotional melodies regarding heartache and longing, and they continue to do so throughout their cover song on this album as well. This compilation album has approximately twenty different artists on it each being nominated and considered as one of MGMT's favorite late night tracks. Of course, MGMT’s cover of “All We Ever Wanted Was Everything” can be found on this compilation alongside of some other familiar names such as The Velvet Underground, Suicide, and Luminaries. Some unfamiliar names can also be found on this album, for example, Disco Inferno and Jacobites, each producing a similar sound as MGMT....full text |
| Pitchfork |
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| Pitchfork |
| For MGMT, the best thing about selling a million copies of your debut album is not all the cocaine, heroin, elegant cars, and models for wives that a platinum record presumably affords you. No, the real reward is in being elevated to a position where your words suddenly carry some weight, where a simple endorsement can provide a career boost to an unsung forbear. In retrospect, MGMT's wiggy, divisive 2010 release, Congratulations, was less a premeditated ploy to alienate their more casual fans than a noble attempt to turn them onto some of Andrew VanWyngarden and Ben Goldwasser's more eccentric influences, via songs named after cult heroes like Brian Eno and Television Personalities founder Dan Treacy. And if but one of the 39 million people who've watched the "Kids" video on YouTube was inspired to pick up a Spacemen 3 record on account of seeing Pete "Sonic Boom" Kember's name listed in the Congratulations liner notes, then his producer's fee was worth it. (Likewise, when recently invited to perform a cover for Pink Floyd Week on "Late Night With Jimmy Fallon", MGMT passed over the Floyd's deep well of FM-radio standards in favor of Syd Barrett's menacing "Lucifer Sam".) That same charitable spirit more explicitly informs MGMT's curatorial contribution to the LateNightTales series, which draws evenly from obscure turn-of-the-1970s psych-folk, the more pastoral end of 80s post-punk and indie, and modern variations thereof. The tracklist is dotted with some notable avant-rock icons (the Velvet Underground, Spacemen 3, Suicide), but they're represented by serenely atypical tracks ("Ocean", "Lord Can You Hear Me?" and "Cheree", respectively) that serve to set up this compilation's more esoteric selections. And as if to further increase their aesthetic distance from Oracular Spectacular's day-glo pop hits, the mood here is almost uniformly somber, if not downright ominous (hello there, "Pink Frost" by the Chills). More so than previous participants in the series, VanWyngarden and Goldwasser take the LateNightTales concept at face value, weaving together their song choices into a dark-night-of-the-soul narrative heavy on themes of isolation and 4 a.m. introspection. Even the band's own contribution is a straightforward rendition of the one Bauhaus song ("All We Ever Wanted Was Everything") that perfectly suits this stoned-and-dethroned mood. VanWyngarden and Goldwasser take great care to ease you into this despairing headspace, opening with the fortuitously timed inclusion of a track from the recently resuscitated Disco Inferno (the gorgeously glistening "Can't See Through It"), and offsetting more droll depictions of loneliness (the Television Personalities' "Stop & Smell the Roses", Julian Cope's "Laughing Boy") with affecting instrumental interludes (Felt's "Red Indians", the Durutti Column's "For Belgium Friends"). However, everything on this compilation feels like a set-up for and recovery from the harrowing "Drug Song" by Dave Bixby, a 70s-era Christian folk singer whose songs of spiritual reawakening are nonetheless colored with melancholy and regret; divorced from their born-again context, lines like "How did I get this way/ It's so unreal/ I'm no longer a person/ I can't even feel" seem especially resonant for a couple of guys who went from recording in their dorm room to suddenly finding themselves playing VIP parties at upscale department stores. MGMT may have gotten famous by ironically declaring they're fated to pretend, but with LateNightTales they take solace in building a soundtrack for when shit gets real....full text |
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