Flash Delirium

When MGMT's Oracular Spectacular came out about a year ago, I decided that I didn't want to buy into that whole scene. I enjoyed the album at first, but was majorly turned off by the crowd they attracted--you know, the Urban Outfitters/Clothing Warehouse hipster type. I therefore took their experimental style as the band trying to cater to that particular (trendy) crowd.

I am happy to say now that I think I was wrong.

Dubbed as "anti-christ" by a population of YouTube viewers, MGMT's new song and video, Flash Delirium, is weird. Like, John Waters/Rocky Horror Picture Show weird. And I am so, so happy that any kind of artist today is capable of envisioning and achieving that kind of absurdity.

The song itself is written in an uncanny way, even more so than songs from their first album. The lyrics are written in Dada fashion with lines of ridiculous, disconnected prose like "The hot dog's getting cold/And you'll never be as good as the Rolling Stones".

And then there's the video, which acts as a both a harmonious and an unexpected representation of the song's quirkiness and absurdity.

The video starts out with the band's front members, Ben Goldwasser and Andrew VanWyngarden, arriving at a Welcome Home party in a lavish mansion. A group of mostly elderly people wearing high society, 60/70s fashion people greets them. It's very Royal Tenenbaums. 

The video's progression leads us through an odd series of images/events including robotic, strained dance numbers, ventriloquist doll chants, and mouths singing from throats--all paired with ostentatious references to phallism, anal sex play, fallacio, and apocalyptic destruction.

After seeing and hearing Flash Delirium, I don't doubt MGMT anymore. I really think that they are genuinely weird, not faking it like all the cultural hacs out there. It turns out we might just be kindred spirits with each other ^_^ 

I am so happy to see something weirdly erotic, disturbed, and Dada by a current artist. I almost thought musicians just weren't strange anymore.