Songs regularly start with promising grooves then go nowhere. Rhythmic repetition attempts to disguise a very obvious lack of development in ideas.
MGMT plod along with all the charisma of a mumbler with a weak chin, and it’s not as if the mix is lush enough to distract from the absence of drive or direction.
Nine Inch Nails rapidly became renowned for emotive and affecting music. Pretty Hate Machine contains those qualities, albeit in anxious tidbits.