MGMT - Late Night Tales

For the uninitiated, Late Night Tales is an album scheme where artists from far and wide are given the chance to piece together an ultimate midnight listening mixtape. Belle & Sebastian, Flaming Lips and Four Tet are amongst those who have previously given it a bash, and this latest album in the series is the work of a certain MGMT.

From what we know of the band already, with their psychedelic offerings and occasionally outlandish fashion sense, it’s assumed that ‘Late Night Tales: MGMT’ is going to be full of trippy, spaced-out selections. VanWyngarden and Goldwasser have instead picked out tunes by the likes of Velvet Underground, The Chills, and a Bauhaus cover by the band themselves. We’re greeted by a less predictable, and far more enjoyable surprise. Far from just covering psychedelic music, this is an album about celebrating counter-culture in general.

That being said, you can still see where MGMT are plucking their selections from. The sense of slight paranoia and the sinister edged lyrics that were so central in ‘Kids’ can be found in shed-loads. Julian Cope’s ‘Laughing Boy’ has a lot of that going on, with lyrics like ‘don’t cast me out of here”. It’s easy to imagine this soundtracking the post-party haze, an empty bottle of Jack Daniels in hand, and the dawn making its way through the curtains. ‘Late Night Tales: MGMT’ is chocka-block with romanticism.

This album does two things. Firstly it might well introduce you to some new music. Disco Inferno’s song from Technicolour back in ’96 might not have been on the trusty old iPod before, but now it might be. The other success lies in the material we couldn’t just put together ourselves. Tucked away amongst the array of gloomy selections is ‘All We Ever Wanted Was Everything’, a post-punk re-imagining of Baushaus. If this album was a smell, it would be scented like cigarettes and well-worn leather. It’s totally different to the sickly sweet blend of hemp and bubblegum that we might’ve expected, and that is what makes this latest Late Night Tales a winner.