MGMT Reveal Eye-Popping "Congratulations" Cover Art

Tweet

The purple-and-pink checkboard background, the flood of turquoise and the two-headed chimpanzee surfing out of the mouth of an icy wave shaped like a Sonic the Hedgehog character: The above image couldn't be anything else but the cover of the next MGMT album, Congratulations. If the music on the album is half as ostentatious as its '80s-tinged cover, we're all in for a memorable second album from Andrew VanWyngarden and Ben Goldwasser. We still haven't determined whether we love or hate the image, but there's no denying it's as unique as MGMT themselves.

See Rolling Stone readers' favorite album covers.

The neon nightmare up top was created by the artist Anthony Ausgang, whose Website is filled with more canvas filled with deranged felines that look like Scratchy from "Itchy and Scratchy" and MC Skat Kat navigating through fluorescent, Dali-inspired landscapes. Fans of the Japanese noise rock band Boredoms might recognize Ausgang's work from their Rebore series. To take a retina-burning odyssey through Ausgang's collection, check out Ausgang's Exit Studios.

MGMT's much anticipated second album Congratulations, the follow-up to Oracular Spectacular, is due out April 13th. The duo has claimed they won't release any singles from the album, but we'll see if they stick to those guns as we inch toward their release date. Until then, check out the Congratulations track list:

Congratulations
1. "It's Working"
2. "Song for Dan Treacy"
3. "Someone's Missing"
4. "Flash Delirium"
5. "I Found a Whistle"
6. "Siberian Breaks"
7. "Brian Eno"
8. "Lady Dada's Nightmare"
9. "Congratulations"

Related Stories:
• My Morning Jacket, Pavement, MGMT Set For Sasquatch! Festival
• Beck Recruits MGMT, Wolfmother, Banhart For "Leonard Cohen" Redo
• MGMT Cast Joanna Newsom, Kid, Monsters in "Kids" Video

• 
  MUSIC 100 Greatest Debut Albums
• 
  MOVIES 'This Is the End' Brings the Goods
• 
  TV The Women of 'Mad Men'
• 
  POLITICS No Price Big Banks Can't Fix

Song Stories

“Karma Chameleon”

Culture Club | 1983

Boy George has said this song was about standing by what you believe in. However, at the time, he was involved in a secret affair with Culture Club drummer Jon Moss. "Now people can understand the songs better," he said. "They were written about my relationship with Jon, and they were also written about being a gay man in a homophobic world." The lines "If I listen to your lies, would you say/I'm a man without conviction/I'm a man who doesn't know how to sell a contradiction," described his life at the time, he said. "I was selling this big lie."

More Song Stories entries »

Twitter