Columbia

Indisputably one of the finest songwriters of all time, Bruce Springsteen is also perhaps the greatest live performer of the last fifty years and almost certainly the very best that mainstream rock music has ever had to offer.
 
All this said, it would be hard for even the staunchest fan to convicingly argue that The Boss has actually written a truly iconic, near-perfect standalone song since 'Streets of Philadelphia' in 1994. More to the point, it’s tough to say he’s released a notably great collection of songs since maybe '87's Tunnel of Love LP - or, at the risk of being harsh, '82's Nebraska opus (a record that remains his high-water mark for many). Sure, there have been some unquestionably great songs since, but many of these were unearthed from the singer's more distant past on '98's exhaustive rarities box set, Tracks. By contrast, his albums of new material throughout the last three decades – be they with or without The E Street Band – have by and large stuck to a ratio of approx. 2/3 filler: 1/3 kinda killer.
 
Despite emerging in the shadow of Clarence Clemons' tragic passing, and for all its being touted as a "furious" response to the global financial crisis, Wrecking Ball sadly amounts to the latest in a long line of mild disappointments. As before, the songs suffer on the most superficial level from profoundly poor production: in recent times all the edges of Springsteen’s rock 'n' roll machine have been smoothed off by Brendan O’Brien, who arguably should know better; this time around the culprit is Ron Aniello, who appears to know nothing.
 
Aniello seems to be under the impression he’s somehow revolutionising The Boss's sound by adding processed beats and sporadic samples, while Springsteen and his PR machine appear to think they're putting out a hardcore punk record that rails against the system in the style of Crass or Minor Threat. As it stands, what we have is a(nother) set of middling, middle-aged songs infected by the influence of Celtic traditional and Latin styles that – a few passable exceptions aside – come across more mildly irked than revolutionary.
 
That’s not to say it’s all bad: in the first half there is promise at least in rousing opener 'We Take Care of Our Own'. Unfortunately, however, that promise is of a ballsy rock album to follow, and a bright start quickly turns into a false dawn. 'Easy Money' is delivered with a commendably cheeky grin (despite on the surface amounting to a fiddle-led piece of anti-capitalist folk), while 'Shackled and Drawn' is an impactful little trad stomper that allows lyrics as corny as "Working man rolls the dice / Working man pays the bills" to sit happily alongside lines as direct and evocative as "We’re walking through the dark in a world gone wrong", before reverting to what regrettably appears to be the disc's default setting: Seeger Sessions-style jig.
 
The jig/hoedown motif reappears on 'Death to My Hometown', while we get an unwelcome dose of Christian preaching on the lamentable 'Rocky Ground' - a song that features both sampling and an actual rap (mercifully delivered by Michelle Moore, as opposed to the man himself), thus singling itself out as a profound lowlight.
 
The anger we’ve read so much about does briefly rise to the surface on the otherwise inconsequential 'Jack of All Trades' – with the impassioned line "If I had me a gun, I’d find the bastards and shoot them on sight" aimed squarely at the city fat cats of this world – as well as on the album's inspirational, anthemic, genuinely rousing title track. The latter also offers practically the only instance here of Springteen wielding a guitar that actually sounds like it’s being played instead of produced; heatedly heartfelt lines like "Let’s see your best shot / Bring on your wrecking ball" are juxtaposed with more considered, poetic couplets ("All our youth and beauty has been given to the dust… All our little victories and glories have turned into parking lots") to wonderful effect.
 
Wrecking Ball's finest moment, though, comes in the form of latter-day live favourite 'Land of Hope and Dreams', a fantastic, open-armed ode to inclusion and love as only Springsteen can deliver. It comfortably sits head and shoulders above everything else here - even Aniello's faux-edgy production can’t dull its many qualities.
 
As with all recent Boss records, the whole thing does eventually grow on you: the guy still knows his way around a catchy tune, after all, and his voice remains a thing of transforming, hypnotic, raw wonder. As you slowly get used to what it is, rather than hoping for something other, you’ll find yourself simply growing comfortable with it. For an album of purported rage and anger, however, gradual grudging acceptance is not exactly what you’d wish for.
 
Springsteen, then: still a master of live performance, still one of the few big-hitting mainstream artists willing to speak his mind through song, and still a figure to be unreservedly admired for his contribution to rock 'n' roll. Just not, it appears, someone who's about to make a great album any time soon. Unless, of course, he fancies giving Steve Albini a call...

Some people will do anything for fame it seems. Within the music business, rumours of pacts with the devil have been rife down through the years, from Robert Johnson to Led Zeppelin. Elsewhere, recent horror flick Jennifer's Body saw poor Megan Fox’s character being sacrificed by an indie band looking for an easy route to fame. Coming at this from another angle, however, how many bands can lay claim to garnering instant fame, basking in it very briefly, hating it and then fleeing from it as quickly as possible? MGMT have done just that.

Their first album, Oracular Spectacular, was a smash hit. The singles 'Kids,' 'Electric Feel' and 'Time To Pretend' became more than just anthems; they sucked in radio play, became YouTube favourites, and brought the band the kind of transglobal success that Bono would be envious of. By the end of the noughties, the duo of Andrew VanWyngarden and Ben Goldwasser may as well have had the word SUPERSTARS tattooed across their foreheads. Rather than build on their new-found notoriety, however, the pair retreated to a cabin with former Spacemen 3 mainstay Pete ‘Sonic Boom’ Kember, and quietly recorded this second album with a promise of no sugary pop tracks and not one single. The world (and Bono) waited.

The opening track here, 'It's Working', was presumably chosen to wave the listener on in with calls of “Look, don't be scared. We said a lot of things would change, but essentially we're still the same two guys!” And it's true. It's a typically trippy number with halcyon vocals, piano and drums all wrapped around an irresistible ‘60s vibe. It is, inevitably, yet another MGMT instant classic. Sorry, guys!

If it wasn't so short, 'Someone's Missing' – a mini-masterpiece in its own right – would surely become another radio-friendly hit. One of the standouts here, it demands repeated plays even after the first listen. The fact is that MGMT do climaxes and choruses like no one else; if they really wanted to escape from fame, they could quite easily make a living writing Christmas ditties or ads for TV.

Barring twelve-minute opus 'Siberian Breaks', the short and sweet pop songs roll by one after another without a glitch. With instrumental track 'Lady Dada's Nightmare' coming on like an ‘80s Bryan Ferry film soundtrack, replete with haunting, scratchy peaks, this second outing is certainly more mature than Oracular Spectacular. The glorious title track rounds off a fantastic selection of songs in disarmingly straightforward fashion, an acoustic guitar and echoing words combining to sum up the MGMT mantra: “It's hardly sink or swim / When all is well / If the ticket sells…”

They may hate fame – and, indeed, go to some lengths to dispel it – but as long as they continue to record as MGMT they're going to be pursued by the celebrity hurricane. In coming to grips with that most slippery of slopes, the ‘difficult second album’, VanWyngarden and Goldwasser have delivered a virtually filler-free showcase of their knack for crafting effortlessly charming material.

Congratulations are certainly in order! 

If all ten tracks of MGMT’s Oracular Spectacular were laid out on canvas and exhibited in a gallery, I imagine the scene would be akin to something from Andy Warhol’s factory, minus the mass production - a colourful array of sounds that threaten hidden meaning but are mostly just different and fun to listen to. The Brooklyn based duo have mastered pop-art for the ears with their experimental debut album, the title of which emerged from entering ‘mystic bullshit’ into a Google search engine.

Bowie influences are evident, as is Dave Fridman’s hands-on approach as the record’s producer. And from start to finish it is easy to visualise these two hippy Ray-Ban donning art students, who in the early days were self-admittedly ‘trying to be obnoxious’, playing with a broad range of musical genres as if they are dabbling with an unlikely combination of charcoal and paint. The result is an unconventional cocktail of electro-glam and country, a spine of traditional rock instruments such as electric guitar, keyboards and drums that have been enhanced with Amazonian jungle flavour.

The radio-friendly ‘Time to Pretend’ is a satire on the music industry’s cliché of living fast and dying young, kicking the album off with a memorable tune nostalgic of the 60s. ‘Kids’ is another psychedelic anthem that you won’t be able to stop yourself from humming along to, but before you start thinking that Oracular Spectacular is just about the booming dance inspired melodies, songs like ‘Electric Feel’, a smooth funky number and one of the album’s best, and the hallucinatory ‘The Handshake’ with its blend of mellow guitar strums and workman whistles, are reminders of the unpredictable nature of the record. It is almost as if such aural pleasures are derived by happy accident- two art students joking around and splashing paint on a wall, only to find that they have created something worthwhile.

A masterpiece it may not be, but Oracular Spectacular is a respectable offering as a debut from a band that may as well have started off by banging plates together. Andrew Vanwyngarden and Ben Goldwasser have come a long way from those offensive college gigs that were tainted by backing tracks.Their ability to dip in and out of genres, cruise through electro glam anthems with agility and conquer gentle chiming melodies means that MGMT will be around for a while. ‘Mystic bullshit’ or not, this is an album that would have definitely inspired Warhol to paint a few soup cans, or maybe even a tin of baked beans.