walking upstream…
MGMT
MGMT began as an in-joke between Wesleyan University roommates Andrew VanWyngarden and Ben Goldwasser, who bonded over noise experiments and a shared record collection before accidentally writing festival-sized hits. Oracular Spectacular (2007) turned "Time to Pretend," "Electric Feel," and "Kids" into an inescapable, faintly sarcastic commentary on the very fame it earned them, and the duo spent the years after deliberately complicating that success with shaggier psychedelia and vintage synth-pop rather than chasing more singles.
the sound in question
2007
KidsMGMT
walk the tributaries ↓
Talking Heads1980s · New wave / Art punk / Post-punk
VanWyngarden has said the New Wave art-funk of Talking Heads and OMD is "definitely in our blood," and that jittery, cerebral-but-danceable DNA runs through Oracular Spectacular's more anxious, wordy tracks — nowhere more than the arch, sing-speak verses of "Time to Pretend."
listen: upstream & heresource: Vice — "MGMT Are Still Perfectly Strange" (VanWyngarden ↗
1980
Once in a LifetimeTalking Heads
2007
Time to PretendMGMT
listen forThe clipped, nervous rhythm-guitar stabs under the verse and the flat, half-spoken vocal delivery that stays deadpan even as the hooks pile up — David Byrne's trick of sounding detached while the band grooves hard underneath.
The Flaming Lips1990s–2000s · Psychedelic rock / Neo-psychedelia / Alternative rock
MGMT built Oracular Spectacular around producer Dave Fridmann, the engineer behind the Flaming Lips' widescreen, effects-drenched sound on The Soft Bulletin — his fingerprints, and the Lips' cosmic-pop sensibility, are all over the record's blown-out psychedelic sheen.
listen: upstream & here
2002
Do You Realize??The Flaming Lips
2007
Electric FeelMGMT
listen forThe layered, slightly overdriven synth washes and towering reverb tails on "Electric Feel" — that queasy, blown-out warmth is Fridmann's signature Flaming Lips move grafted onto a groove, not a typical 2007 indie-rock mix.
David Bowie1970s · Art rock / Glam rock
Reviewers of Oracular Spectacular pointed to the band being "in love with the bombastic end of 1970s rock — David Bowie, Marc Bolan, Fleetwood Mac" and singled out "Weekend Wars" specifically as "a fantastic David Bowie / Flaming Lips hybrid."
listen: upstream & here
1971
Life on Mars?David Bowie
2007
Weekend WarsMGMT
listen forThe theatrical vocal swells and glam stomp-and-swagger of "Weekend Wars" — melodrama played completely straight, turning a simple chord progression into something that feels like a pronouncement, the way Bowie could.