Album Review
Loss Of Life
by MGMT
Released 2/23/24
By Joe Vickrey
Loss of Life Album Art
“Failing to build off past success isn’t a concern for MGMT, but it is their downfall.”
I have a basic philosophy that the longer an artist takes to record an album, the more likely it is to be a letdown. MGMT returned with Loss Of Life six years after their last album, Little Dark Age. I consider “Little Dark Age” to be one of the best songs ever written, and I come unhinged anytime I hear it in public, so the bar going into this record was high. I hoped MGMT would be an exception to my rule, but Loss Of Life simply wasn’t an exciting entry for some of the most inventive and stellar musicians in the business.
To me, MGMT is synonymous with synth pop. Clever, existential songs coated in colorful and vibrant textures. Even if you lived under a rock with a tin foil hat, you’d still have heard “Electric Feel” a few times through radio signals in your teeth. The electro-pop masterminds behind some of the biggest hits of the 2000s have always made it clear they’re not going to do what people expect of them. While keeping the existential themed lyrics, Loss Of Life comes across much more subdued.
Photo by Jonah Freeman
This could be the group’s most gentle entry to date.
The album begins with “Loss Of Life (part 2)” and ends with “Loss Of Life” which sounds like a brilliant way to tell your listeners that this is a circular piece of art that cascades into itself – but this is not a circular piece of art that cascades into itself. I can’t hear any real connection between the two pieces and nothing about the second movement feels cohesive with the rest of the record. Rather than adding to the music, the strange title choice draws my attention away and only leaves me asking, “Why?”
The group should be awarded some points for not following their peers’ production trends. In a time where every modern indie song sounds like it was run through a wobbly old tape deck, Loss Of Life sounds like it was pristinely recorded in an alternate reality of the 1970s. The exception to that being “Dancing in Babylon,” which legitimately sounds like it was recorded for a cheesy ‘80s Christian movie. I would legitimately nominate this as the worst song of their career.
But it’s not all bad news: “Mother Nature,” the first single of the album, was by far my favorite track. It sounds like a song the Beatles would’ve written if they’d stayed together for another couple of years. Any preconceived notions for what an MGMT song should sound like are immediately swept away as you step into the misty fog of mid-tempo magic.
Photos by Jonah Freeman
“Bubblegum Dog” is another standout track. The most uptempo song of the collection, it arguably could have fit into their breakthrough album Oracular Spectacular. Harpsichord and distorted drums carry you through a slightly hallucinogenic parade, but the clean up crew quickly follows with “Nothing to Declare.” The song is a pleasant acoustic ballad that reprises some of the feel of “Mother Nature” with half of the magic.
What’s always great about MGMT is that even if you’re not a fan of one of their songs, you know the song was made perfectly. The ambiance and instrumentation are always interesting even if the melody isn’t.
The unfortunate reality is that even though these songs are masterfully layered and dense in color, much of the album feels forgettable. Many of the melodies feel bland. The backgrounds are infinitely more interesting than the foregrounds, but with nothing to latch onto, the songs don’t exactly have you racing back for a second listen.
Failing to build off past success isn’t a concern for MGMT, but it is their downfall.