When you hear that MGMT are back with their first album in six years, an album that's supposedly more upbeat than 2018's ill-fated but strangely danceable album Little Dark AgeI thought they would have come up with a different title than… Loss of life. “I wish I was kidding,” sings Andrew VanWyngaarden on the second-to-last verse, without ever neglecting the record's brevity — which is more distinctly philosophical and existential than anything else the duo, now officially independent after leaving their long-running Columbia Records label, have put out from Ever. Recording the album in 2021 and 2022, VanWyngarden and Ben Goldwasser were by no means impervious to the spread of apocalyptic art in the wake of the pandemic, and they responded almost in their own irreverent way with a new song called “Oh No Corona,” which their management advised against releasing. “I'm Kinda Home” is another lyric in “I Wish I Was Joking”, however Loss of life MGMT's record is not an upbeat dance about strange life-changing events, nor does it double down on the somber mood of Little Dark Age, whose title track unexpectedly went viral on TikTok. But in their search for greater meaning amidst the darkness, they deliver some of the richest, most emotionally affecting material of their career.
With the new album, MGMT have managed to overcome the youthful naiveté and exploratory tendencies that characterized their early albums with a pervasive angst and newly streamlined sound. Little Dark Age. That sounds like a lot, and if you've only heard the individual songs, it's probably overkill. Most of the advanced tracks – with the exception of “Bubblegum Dog”, which originated in the sessions for the previous album and is a bit less exotic – suggest a warm, delicate palette that permeates the album but varies widely in scale and emotion. On “Mother Nature,” the album’s first proper song, the singer makes a case for holding on to the idea of love by contrasting fantasy language (“Open the castle doors and let me in”) with mundane activities like taking out the trash, and expecting it to happen. Listener's doubt: “You know what comes just after dark/But I understand your hesitation.” Nothing to Advertise takes a calmer approach, finding freedom in the absence of self-definition, the absence of purpose in one's wanderings.
What comes after dark is not as clear as it seems, and on this wandering, MGMT's voice sounds stable and unburdened. This allows them to return to, or reconcile, their roots – the absurdity and genre-hopping of their early shows, and the seriousness of the classic rock they sang in college. If anything, template Loss of life It's more faithful to the definition of classic rock that freezes on the radio rather than the obsessive classification of music online, so the '90s alternative rock influences of “Mother Nature” and “Bubblegum Dog” filter into the cinema. The soft rock of “People in the Streets” and the powerful lyricism of “Dancing in Babylon,” a collaboration with Christine and the Queens that would have fit comfortably alongside his more recent work, unabashedly sentimental and a little understated in its romantic pronouncements.
With former collaborators Patrick Wimberly and Dave Friedman returning to the fold, there's a sense of familiarity here, but the group is also expanding their creative circle in ways that enhance their eccentric impulses and prevent this from being called their “most accessible” record. One notable contributor is Oneohtrix Point Never (aka Daniel Lopatin), whose extra production is certainly responsible for at least some of Dancing in Babylon's turbulent electronics, but whose influence is his tendency to distort and stretch the songs into feel-good journeys. Nostalgic yet abstract – it's most apparent on the two tracks he co-produced, which also represent opposite sides of the album. Like many of the tracks on the album, “Phradie's Song” is meant to begin on acoustic guitar, and while its gentle, lullaby-like qualities are maintained, it is the dreaminess that swells in its dramatic conclusion; The closing title track, on the other hand, expands in unexpected ways that justify the “untie the cosmic knots” lyric. On the epic “Nothing Changes,” which goes so far as to reference their timeless song “Time to Pretend,” VanWyngarden sings, “If I could change / I wouldn’t be here.” MGMT still exists, of course, and is constantly changing – a fact that is as natural as it is somewhat magical.
