MGMT Unveil "Congratulations" Song "Flash Delirium"

You've already feasted your eyes on MGMT's WTF album cover for their upcoming album Congratulations, and now you can hear what the band's been cooking up for their April 13th LP with "Flash Delirium." MGMT unveiled the track a free download on their Who Is MGMT? site today. The adventurous song — MGMT seem to pack four distinct parts into four minutes — is a bit of departure from the band's Oracular Spectacular songs, scaling back on its predecessor's electro-bop for a song that sounds similar to Deerhunter in its first half and Zombies in its second.

"Some will love it, some will hate it," Andrew VanWyngarden told Rolling Stone of Congratulations' stylistic shift in our Spring Music Preview. "We want to freak people out." This first song does just that, and it takes multiple listens to grapple with the track's constant curveballs. "Flash Delirium" ultimately keeps building until it explodes into a rapturous harmony, breaking into full-out thrash in its waning seconds. The song's message: "Dance until the heart explodes and we'll make this place ignite."

For more on Congratulations and all the huge releases due out this season, check out Rolling Stone's Spring Music Preview.

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Song Stories

“All Along the Watchtower”

The Jimi Hendrix Experience | 1968

Jimi Hendrix got hold of Bob Dylan's early John Wesley Harding tapes and in late 1967 recorded a version of "All Along the Watchtower" with the Experience in London. Dissatisfied with that first development, Hendrix brought those tapes with him to New York in early 1968 when he began work on Electric Ladyland. Eddie Kramer, Hendrix's engineer at the time, told Rolling Stone that Hendrix "was still looked upon by his basically white audience as the mammoth black guitar hero. There was a constant fight within him to expand himself." Hendrix's successful take on Dylan's work has long been recognized by the songwriter. "I liked Jimi Hendrix's record of this and ever since he died I've been doing it that way," Dylan wrote in the liner notes to his Biograph box set. "Strange how when I sing it, I always feel it's a tribute to him in some kind of way."

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