Music critics have been generally divided over MGMT's experimental departures from the massive hooks and groundbreaking commercial success of their debut album (e.g. "Kids" and "Time to Pretend"). A particularly negative review of their third self-titled album by SPINaccuses Benjamin Goldwasser and Andrew VanWyngarden for failing to notice "their lack of hooks or any sort of identity", and for producing "A confused, confusing album".
For better or worse, post-Oracular Spectacular MGMT has no aspirations to be direct and straightforward, opting instead for mystery, self-conscious irony and exploration - and thus often 'burdening' the listener with incomprehension, uncertainty and discomfort. As Goldwasser noted, their third album is about decidedly abstract, complex and transcendental matters: "accepting that the world is totally messed up, and the apocalypse is going to happen whether we want it to or not, and finding something beautiful to live for" (Pitchfork).
Some of these existentialist nodes of thought are apparent on "Cool Song No.2", which has mainly drawn media attention for its Isaiah Seret-directed video (Noisey hailed it as 2013's Video of the Year). On his website, Seret notes that the 'Plant Hunter' video "stars Michael Kenneth Williams, known for his iconic roles as Omar in The Wire and Chalky in Boardwalk Empire, as The Plant Hunter—a new jack thief who commandeers genetically engineered plants and processes them into euphoria-inducing drugs—and Henry Hopper as Tree, his lover who has been mutated by the drug and is undergoing the final chapter of a bizarre physical transformation". The cinematic music video is basically an interracial gay love story (which might also double as a metaphor for AIDS), wrapped up in a familiar cautionary narrative about the dangers of genetic modification.
The song's lyrics are harder to decipher, and would have completely eluded me if it wasn't for Goldwasser's stated artistic intent:
'Wherever scientists turn lead to birdsTorment ignites essence, delights from the earthWhat you find shockingThey find amusingSomething else to soften a sadistic urgeWhen they tell you the extent of the viceThen the prime time mission is to choke the statisticianAnd like the senses that you're lurking behindWhile it gnaws right through to your coreOh I'd twist it more'
Lyrics: Genius
There seems to be some deep, uneasy scepticism - even hostility - for the 'scientific experts' who proffer 'Poor explanation and nothing shown'. The final verse presents two rhetorical, existentialist questions about the extent of human freedom, while tentatively accepting that interdependence might be preferable to isolation/independence (the lines 'I might feel better/ Knowing that I was alone' from the second verse have been subtly altered to 'I might feel better/ Knowing I wasn't alone'). If the world around you is really going to end (or irreversibly devolve into a dystopia), you just might prefer not to endure it all by yourself.
