MGMT

Oracular Spectacular (2007)

Oracular Spectacular wraps genuinely strange psychedelic production choices inside some of the most immediate hooks of the era. "Time to Pretend" turns a cynical account of manufactured rock-star excess into an anthem catchy enough to undercut its own irony, synths and vocal harmonies pushing the song toward pure pop even as the lyrics stay knowing and detached. The record's glam and psych-rock roots are audible throughout, filtered through a bedroom-pop sensibility the band never fully abandoned. It became one of the definitive indie-crossover albums of the late 2000s, launching a career that immediately moved away from repeating it.

Sleeve notes

Oracular Spectacular · 2007

MGMT formed at Wesleyan University around Ben Goldwasser and Andrew VanWyngarden, building a sound that fused 1970s glam and psychedelic rock — Bowie and Marc Bolan among the reference points VanWyngarden has named — with the synth-pop lineage of New Order and the Human League. The duo's later album Congratulations included a track named directly for Brian Eno, one of two named tributes on the record alongside a song for Television Personalities' Dan Treacy, making the band's affection for both explicit rather than merely inferred.

Oracular Spectacular (2007) brought the band's psychedelic-pop songwriting to a much wider audience than the campus scene it emerged from, its combination of festival-ready hooks and genuinely strange production choices making it one of the definitive indie-crossover records of the late 2000s. The album's commercial success gave the band the latitude to move in a considerably more difficult, less commercial direction on the records that followed, trading immediate hooks for denser, more collage-like psychedelia.