I’m going to be up front here – if you are one of the MGMT “fans” that saw no need to listen to anything off their debut album “Oracular Spectacular” other than the hits “Time To Pretend,” “Electric Feel,” and “Kids,” then there’s certainly no reason for you to listen to their sophomore album “Congratulations,” out April 13. You just won’t be interested, and that’s fine. But those of us who cherished “Oracular” for its genuinely fearless headiness will delight in the expanded hodgepodge presented in this latest installment.

Frontmen Ben Goldwasser ’05 and Andrew VanWyngarden ’05 have openly declared that “Congratulations” is not a singles album.

“We’d rather people hear the whole album as an album and see what tracks jump out rather than the ones that get played on the radio – if anything gets played on the radio,” Goldwasser said in an interview with NME.com.

Indeed, my first once-over of “Congratulations” did not impress me, partially because nothing grabbed me. But it wasn’t just that; I also felt overwhelmed. I heard punk tributes to Dan Treacy and Brian Eno (each of whom get a song named after them), 12 minutes of orchestral psychedelica in “Siberian Breaks,” and extraneous do-wop and jazz flute in “Flash Delerium.” I didn’t understand how the pieces fit together, and I figured that MGMT was trying to do too much.

But after a few more listens, something clicked. Now the album is virtually on repeat in my dorm room. The songs play through my head in class, in the fitness center, and as I eat scrumptious Usdan panini. So, what exactly caused this subjective shift? How is it that I can’t get these supposedly “non-catchy” songs out of my brain?

The answer to these questions is twofold. First, MGMT has crafted an album of musical subtlety in which the hooks don’t jump out right away. Instead, they hold back in a larger framework, waiting to be discovered. Second, in the vein of “Oracular,” the music on “Congratulations” is as much about the ideas behind the songs as it is about their sound. Idiosyncratic structures and poetic lyrics coalesce and beg to be pondered further, so that an hour, a day, a week after hearing the songs for the first time, the listener is drawn back, only to encounter the hidden poppiness of numbers like the aggressively trippy “It’s Working” with its Beach Boys-esque ending, or “Someone’s Missing,” which starts out slow and spacey before exploding into a joyous Motown jam. I found myself listening more closely to the parts of songs I didn’t like at first in anticipation of the parts that I did, and I began to develop a more holistic appreciation of the music.

When asked in a SPIN.com interview what about “Congratulations” would most surprise listeners, VanWyngarden replied, “The honesty of it; it’s very plaintive. In a weird way, it’s like a soul record.”

For a “hip indie band,” I’m convinced that their success is a result of the fact that they are less concerned with looking cool than with honesty. Maybe it’s the way that they insert musical allusions to the Beach Boys into songs about drug use in a totally non-cynical manner. Who knows. But there’s definitely something at play here that is distinctively un-stilted, un-hip, that many will find refreshing. “Congratulations” is less about trying to do too much than it is about expressing yourself on your own terms.