Remember MGMT? No you don’t. You never really knew MGMT. Savvy?

If there is any sentiment to be excised from MGMT’s sophomore offering, Congratulations, then that’s it. And that’s fine. Any band is entitled to change their own persona and to mold themselves in the way they choose. And we as listeners are similarly entitled to move on to new frontiers if said identity crisis induced change crosses the subtle line between piquing our interest through its eccentricity and losing its sheen by wallowing in its own boorish attention seeking.

So has the band’s transition been constructive or has it been a net loss? In this respect, MGMT’s rebranding vaguely reminds me of a high school friend who, in dealing with her first heartbreak, dyed her hair, got her nose pierced, and was found ever more often with a cigarette in hand. Sure she’s might have made herself more ‘interesting’, but all of the sudden it seems like she’s flirting with a totally different crowd.

You’ll simply have to accept the new MGMT for what they are. They’re the band that goes to Coachella and refuses to play their biggest hit because they’ve moved on. They’re the pseudo-intellectuals who name a song ‘Lady Dada’s Nightmare’ because “…it’s really kind of messed up sounding, and we thought it would be funny…” They’re the phased post-success band that has achieved it all and has returned to report to the plebeian masses that it’s not actually all it’s cracked up to be.

All of that said, Congratulations is an enjoyable experience. The title track is an easygoing if sarcastic and self-deprecating melody with a hook more that satisfying enough to induce grooving. Brian Eno is a frantic anthem which holds your interest for long enough that the irritation it induces is but a backtrack and whilst Lady Dada’s Nightmare does verge towards being more of a haphazard noisy placeholder pre-empting the finale, the rest of the songs are amply listenable.

From any virgin band, Congratulations would be seen as the promising result of a nod to modern experimental, psychedelic and indie rock largely infused with the band’s own brand of personality. From MGMT, the album can be seen in much the same way, however in the wake of Oracular Spectacular and the Kids era, the listener is left with an uncomfortable insecurity in the authenticity of the band’s personality.

As far as cheap thrills go, Smule’s Ocarina application for the iPhone ranks pretty highly. To play a note one blows into the phone’s microphone and touches a combination of the screen’s four hotspots.
I read the notes off the screen as I played. Lots of other Zelda songs have also been written up by the application’s community but ‘The Song of Time’ is one of the easiest to play.

• Firstly, Spotify is Swedish. And I am half Swedish. And I am in the habit of stressing this fact in a futile attempt to pretend I am more exotic and diverse than I really am.
• Streaming does appear to happen almost instantly.
• The music is apparently streamed at about 160 kbps. Whilst this obviously gives lower quality sound than those FLACs you downloaded from your music tracker of choice, I can not tell the difference when listening on my home speakers, so I’m happy.
• Spotify scrobbles to last.fm, and I love last.fm. In fact, last.fm is now probably mainstream enough that any streaming application that ignored it would probably be sunk. People enjoy showing off their tastes.
• There are very few ads, even in the free version – if you can get an invite to the free version.

But, enough of that. Let’s put this thing to the test.

Because there is no way for me to scientifically test this application in any reasonable amount of time I am simply going to pit Spotify against my 20 most listened to artists in the past 3 months according to my last.fm. This is an interesting test for me because I download most of my music from illegitimate (but brilliant) sources. (In fact I download all of it, but I also buy cds and visit concerts if I enjoy the music.) Perhaps if a service such as Spotify allowed me to properly ‘test’ music, I would be less inclined to download it. I want to see if Spotify would have been a reasonable substitute for illegal downloading by seeing what percentage of the music I have enjoyed most recently could have been streamed on their service.

My last three months of music is as follows.

Spotify’s results are as follows:

Having now tested this, I have to say that I am rather impressed. The only artist which Spotify totally failed to stream to me was DJ Blow, an unsigned artist who’s music doesn’t seem to be available on the public internet.

I was surprised that Radiohead’s In Rainbows and Nine Inch Nail’s The Slip and Ghosts I-IV were not available, but it would make sense that this was due to Spotify having made deals with record labels, not artists. I think this kind of issue will become very make-or-break for Spotify and any similar services as more bands abandon their labels or simply do not sign to the big ones. That they are signed to smaller labels may explain why the bands whose songs only appeared on compilations are in that situation.

I should also note that in the process of trialling Spotify I was played some very fetching tracks and remixes that I didn’t know existed. I was also told to remember to file my tax returns on time or face a possible £100 fine. Apparently government agencies are the current British advertisers.

Overall, I do recommend Spotify as a good way to try out music before purchasing, or even just before properly downloading it, but the application is not without pitfalls (or preachy advertisements). Drop a note in the comments about your experiences with Spotify, or if you would like an invite.

Lastly, I need to give a shout out to Alex Muller, my good friend who invited me to Spotify in the first place.

Anyway, yesterday I did my final 2008 playlist. Here it is.

Air     -     Sexy Boy
AmpLive     -     Reckonerz (ft. Charli2na)
Archive     -     Fuck U
Basshunter     -     Patrik And The Small Guy – Throw Your Hands Up
Beirut     -     Nantes
Ben Folds     -     The Frown Song
Bob Dylan     -     Like A Rolling Stone
Brand New     -     Untitled 02
Bright Eyes     -     Lover I Don’t Have To Love
Clearlake     -     Keep Smiling
Conor Oberst     -     Lenders in the Temple
Crystal Castles     -     Crimewave (Crystal Castles VS HEALTH)
Daft Punk     -     Veridis Quo
Death Cab For Cutie     -     Grapevine Fires
Death Cab For Cutie     -     Styrofoam Plates
The Decemberists     -     Record Year
Deerhoof     -     Believe E. S. P.
The Dexateens     -     Slender Thread
DJ Blow     -     Title and Registration
Elbow     -     Weather to Fly
Electric Six     -     Dance Pattern
Eminem     -     Rock Bottom
The Faint     -     Worked Up So Sexual
Finch     -     Ender
The Flaming Lips     -     The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song
Flobots     -     Handlebars
Frightened Rabbit     -     The Modern Leper
The Good, The Bad & The Queen     -     The Bunting Song
Gym Class Heroes     -     Cupid’s Chokehold (feat. Patrick Stump)
Interpol     -     Pioneer To The Falls
Jonathan Coulton     -     Re: Your Brains
Justice     -     The Party
Kanye West     -     Stronger
The Killers     -     Spaceman
LCD Soundsystem     -     New York, I Love You But You’re Bringing Me Down
Matisyahu     -     King Without A Crown
MC Lars     -     Space Game
Metric     -     Combat Baby
MGMT     -     Kids
Middleman     -     Good To Be Back
Modest Mouse     -     Fire It Up
Murder By Death     -     The Devil Drives
Murder By Death     -     Spring Break 1899
Neutral Milk Hotel     -     In The Aeroplane Over The Sea
Nine Inch Nails     -     Discipline
of Montreal     -     Gallery Piece
Panic At The Disco     -     That Green Gentlemen (Things Have Changed)
Pendulum     -     The Otherside
Pixies     -     Where Is My Mind?
PJ Harvey     -     The Piano
Psapp     -     Hill Of Our Home
Queens Of The Stone Age     -     Suture Up Your Future
Radiohead     -     Fake Plastic Trees
Serj Tankian     -     Empty Walls
The Shins     -     Saint Simon
Sigur Rós     -     Gobbledigook
Stars     -     In Our Bedroom After the War
Stars     -     Going, Going, Gone [Live]
Sufjan Stevens     -     For The Widows In Paradise, For The Fatherless In Ypsilanti
Vampire Weekend     -     I Stand Corrected
Weezer     -     Pork & Beans
Wolf Parade     -     You Are A Runner And I Am My Father’s Son

Is this something you do? Will think of doing it now?

(list compiled by exporting playlist as unicode text and importing it into excel before editing.)