Oracular Spectacular, released in 2007, offers three obvious starting points. “Kids” has a synth melody that quickly takes hold; “Electric Feel” settles into a supple groove; and “Time to Pretend” turns a grand pop arrangement into something that feels both exhilarating and slightly uneasy. Together, they show how MGMT can make a song immediately enjoyable without making its mood completely straightforward.

The important thing is to avoid treating those songs as a complete description of the band. Congratulations, from 2010, follows a more wandering musical route. It rewards an interest in texture, changes of direction and the feeling of a whole album unfolding. The listening experience becomes less about waiting for another familiar chorus and more about allowing the music to lead somewhere unexpected.

Little Dark Age, released in 2018, brings the tension between accessibility and strangeness into sharper focus. The title track uses a controlled, dark synth atmosphere around a melody that is easy to carry away. There is something appealing about that combination: the tune welcomes you in, while the sound keeps a little distance. It is pop music with an uneasy expression on its face.

On 2024’s Loss of Life, songs such as “Mother Nature,” “Bubblegum Dog” and “Nothing to Declare” provide further routes into the catalogue. The appeal here is the room MGMT give themselves to change the scale and pace of a song. Acoustic warmth, layered arrangements and more unhurried passages sit comfortably within a musical identity that has always allowed for unusual turns.

That willingness to wander will not suit every listener. Some passages can feel as though the band are more interested in exploring a sound than delivering a direct emotional payoff. If you want every track to land with the immediacy of “Kids,” parts of the catalogue may test your patience. It helps to approach each record on its own terms and let a different kind of enjoyment develop.

For The Fat Llama, MGMT are worth returning to because they keep the relationship between melody and imagination alive. A catchy song can be a doorway into stranger music, and a strange song can reveal a surprisingly simple feeling. Start with the tracks you recognise, then follow the albums beyond them. The discovery is in hearing how much more there is to the band than the first chorus that caught your attention.