MGMT: 'Flash Delirium'

It seems a little unfair to excise 'Flash Delirium' from the context of its upcoming parent album, Congratulations - because of MGMT's "no singles" stance for the record, of course - but, then again, the Brooklyn band have made the track available as a (free) pre-release download. They've also given it a rather expensive-looking promotional video complete with weirdness, line-dancing oldsters and creepy ventriloquist dummies. So, as a trailer, does it whet the appetite for the follow-up to 2007's awfully-titled-but-actually-quite-good Oracular Spectacular? Just about.

What strikes you immediately is that, following the absurdly catchy triumvirate of 'Time To Pretend', 'Electric Feel' and 'Kids', 'Flash Delirium' is basically hook-free. You could bash the melody of those earlier singles out on a Stylophone and they'd be instantly recognisable. 'Flash Delirium' needs half-a-dozen plays before you can actually remember the thing. It's nice enough in a Piper-era Floyd/muddled US indie sort-of-way, and it does eventually get under the skin - despite its clever-clever construction and lyrics. Thom Yorke reportedly said that he was "embarrassed by melody" before recording the (also single-free) Kid A, but the cheeky bugger actually snuck in plenty of tunes under the radar in among all the atmospheric rhythms. Let's hope MGMT have done the same.