There was a time—somewhere between the collapse of the MySpace Top 8 and the rise of ironic mustaches (guilty)—when my generation went off to college and experienced our first real taste of freedom. You know the moments. BitTorrent running 24/7 on your laptop, skinny jeans that had lived three lifetimes, bedsheets that hadn’t been washed since move-in day, eyes wide open to the neon absurdity of existence.
Oracular Spectacular was the soundtrack to those halcyon days. It effectively was a generational wink that celebrated burning out young, experimental substance exploration, rejection the 9-to-5 job that awaited us all, all delivered with the kind of melodramatic flourish only twenty-year-old kids could summon. If you were in college during 2008, odds are high this album caught you at just the right altitude, lounging with your roommates as you skipped class and trying to feel something more than ironic detachment. MGMT gave you that permission. “Electric Feel” turned dive bar dance floors into a temple of sweaty transcendence. “Kids” made you nostalgic for a childhood you barely remembered. And “The Youth” made you believe, if only for three minutes, that that feeling of euphoria you were experience might actually be possible to extend infinitely.
This album bridged the gap between indie rock’s scruffy introspection and EDM’s wide-eyed euphoria, wrapped it up in glittering synths, and delivered it with a kind of cosmic shrug. And we sure as hell lived it. On rooftops. In basements. At 3 a.m. on a Tuesday when someone handed you a glow stick and told you to follow the music.
That’s MGMT’s legacy to me. Moore than just a collection of songs, Oracular Spectacular is a time capsule of those feelings of starry optimism that hit right when we needed it most.
Standout Songs: “Time To Pretend”, “Electric Feel”, “Kids”, “The Youth”
