[ Late Night Tales / CD ]
Release Date: Monday 3 October 2011
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Formed in 2002 in Brooklyn, New York the band consists of multi-instrumentalists Andrew VanWyngarden and Ben Goldwasser, both alumni of Wesleyan University. Their 2008 debut album 'Oracular Spectacular' spawned the almost ubiquitous hit singles 'Kids', 'Time To Pretend' and 'Electric Feel' while 2010's follow up 'Congratulations' saw them embrace more of a progressive, guitar-driven sound.
The band's Late Night Tales selection of post-punk, cult indie and counter-culture figureheads reflects the band's multifaceted sound, and draws comparisons with contemporary dreampop/chillwave/shoegaze/folk scenes on both sides of the Atlantic.
The listener finds MGMT presiding over the playlist "after-the-after-party"; daybreak creeping through the curtains earlier than desirable, broken bodies lining the corridors, the emotionally bankrupt kept alive by timeless songs of heartache and longing.
Luminaries The Velvet Underground, Suicide and Julian Cope, although not with their most famous songs, sit alongside less familiar names
such as Disco Inferno; whose 'Can't See It Through' from their final '96 album 'Technicolour' opens proceedings.
MGMT's exclusive cover of 'All We Ever Wanted Was Everything' by Bauhaus sits comfortably alongside the UK post-punk-gothic band's
peers The Durutti Column, The Chills, The Jacobites and Felt's brief but imposing instrumental 'Red Indians'.
Paranoia strikes deep: the double header of Cheval Sombre's 'Troubled Mind' and 'Drug Song' by 60's Christian folk singer Dave Bixby
accentuate the hope offered by the ever penitent Spacemen 3 (MGMT's second album 'Congratulations' was recorded with founder Pete Kember aka Sonic Boom), who deliver 'Lord Can You Hear Me?' in respect to the beautiful closer 'Morning Splendor', taken from Pauline Anna Strom's rare '82 LP 'Trans-Millenia Consort'.
1. Can't See Through It - Disco Inferno
2. Love You Girl - The Great! Society
3. Cheree - Suicide
4. Stop & Smell The Roses - Television Personalities
5. Ocean - The Velvet Underground
6. Red Indians - Felt
7. Laughing Boy - Julian Cope
8. For Belgian Friends - The Durutti Column
9. Mound Of Clay - Charlie Feathers
10. Song For Wilde - Mark Fry
11. All We Ever Wanted Was Everything - MGMT
12. Troubled Mind - Cheval Sombre
13. Drug Song - Dave Bixby
14. Hearts Are Like Flowers - Jacobites
15. Pink Frost - The Chills
16. Sparks - Marvin Rev
17. Melancholy Man - The Wake
18. Lord Can You Hear Me? - Spacemen 3
19. Morning Splendour - Pauline Anna Strom
20. Lost For Words Pt. 2 - Paul Morley
21. MGMT Late Night Tales Continuous Mix - Late Night Tales