Slightly camp electro-pop? Me? With my reputation? Has no-one thought of the consequences? You’re talking to a man who barely, barely likes the Scissor Sisters for Christ’s sake. In fact, the Scissor Sisters are an instructive comparison because, despite the electro-synth genius of opener Time to Pretend, this is much more of a disco record than an edgy synth one.

The hype surrounding MGMT put me off to such an extent (ah right, another heavily stylised bunch of electro ponces from New York – wonderful) that I ignored the album, the buzz and the band for ages. In fact, it was only when I discovered that they are playing Edinburgh’s Liquid Room in a couple of weeks that I thought ‘Oh yes, them.  I wonder if they’re actually any good after all’. The buzz alone tempted me to go along and check them out, if just for the sake of it, almost in a collector’s sense.

So I heard Time to Pretend, I bought the album and I loved it, largely. I have to confess that I start to lose interest in the second half, so I can’t claim to love it all, and it may not be dark enough for me to form a close emotional attachment. But this is not an album that I approach on a thoughtful basis, it’s an album I approach on a maximum wiggle basis. And there is plenty of wiggling to be done when MGMT are playing.

MGMT – Time to Pretend
MGMT – Weekend Wars

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Well I’ve come something of a roundabout route to loving this album, but love it I do.  From the sounds of it, this lot went a slightly roundabout route to becoming a band as well.  According to their MySpace blurb they met whilst playing salsa.  Yes, salsa.  What is the fucking world coming to, I ask you.

Myself, I found them on the exceptionally nutritious Boy Scout Recordings sampler handed out at last year’s (brilliant) End of the Road Festival, and approached the album expecting some unusually melodic but nevertheless gently pastoral folk pop.  This is not quite what I got, but once I adjusted I realised that I still loved it, however the hell you might describe the stuff.

Synth-folk is their own term, and I think that fits.  There’s a lot of sunny pop in there too, but for all they are playing what I guess you might term acoustic folk for the most part, this does indeed owe many a nod to the indie synth pop that is so popular at the moment.  There’s the synth flourishes themselves, of course, which although they are used pretty sparingly still make a fairly indelible impression on the ambience of the record.

The most unusual element of synthyness is actually nothing to do with synthesisers themselves, more in the vocal delivery that tends to accompany it.  That back-and-forth, slightly shouty vocal exchange that modern synth-pop groups seem to love makes a slightly unusual appearance on a couple of the songs here, surprisingly so, I’d find.

All three of the Sargasso Trio write songs, which seems to make a little more sense of these stylistic juxtapositions, but for all they are odd when laid down in black and white the surprises are all pleasant when listening to the album.  It’s a lovely, friendly listen, jaunty and poppy, but with enough of that folksy sadness to tinge the playfulness with pathos and give the album some real emotional grip.  Lovely.

Sargasso Trio – The Drum
Sargasso Trio – It’s Hot in Hell

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