It’s become cliché to call Little Dark Age a “return” for MGMT, but the album shows once again that the duo can make great, readily enjoyable music that still feels genuine.
Let’s take things back to a decade ago—early 2008. MGMT’s debut album Oracular Spectacular has just come out. We start to hear songs like “Time to Pretend,” “Electric Feel,” and most of all, “Kids,” everywhere. The rise of synthpop within the indie scene is really starting to take off, and as a hit-making machine, MGMT seem like they might remain at the forefront for some time.
This scenario didn’t quite pan out. Instead, MGMT have become one of the more divisive musical acts in recent memory. The duo of Andrew VanWyngarden and Benjamin Goldwasser apparently harbored a more anti-commercial sentiment than anticipated, as they revealed their desire to make more experimental music that’s the opposite of radio-friendly at the peak of their fame. Good luck finding anything remotely close to that simple melody earworm from “Kids” on their 2010 album Congratulations or their 2013 self-titled album.
Some applauded the band’s integrity for placing self-expression before more money or fame. Others, with a greater appreciation for psychedelic and experimental music, genuinely grew to like the new material. But most listeners reacted to post-2008 MGMT as if they had been the victim of a bait-and-switch, eagerly buying Congratulations to hear new synthpop songs, and then thinking “what is this crap?” halfway through the album.
Luckily for MGMT, these expectations no longer exist for the release of their fourth album Little Dark Age. The band knows most Oracular Spectacular devotees have jumped ship. They have the freedom to go whichever direction they want. And given all this freedom, MGMT settled on making their most accessible music in a decade.
That’s right, Little Dark Age is full of moments that can only be described as catchy. Take the title track, which serves as the album’s first single. Taking a cue from 80s new wave, complete with VanWyngarden doing his best Robert Smith impression in the video, the song is full ominous synthesizers and heavy reverb effects on the vocals. When it reaches its chorus, a pulsating beat appears next to a simple pop melody, and the song’s dark feel is cemented by lyrics like “I grieve in stereo, the stereo sounds strange/I know that if you hide, it doesn’t go away.” Even though it’s from a band who have spent so much time pushing musical boundaries, a gothic electropop song still comes as a surprise.
The title track isn’t an outlier either. “Me and Michael” is shamelessly pop-oriented, complete with Goldwasser laying down 80s synthesizer hooks, a repetitive chorus of “Me and Michael, solid as they come/Me and Michael, it’s not a question now,” and even ‘whoa-oh-ohs’ in the background that border on “millenial whoops.” If that doesn’t sound campy enough, realize that the original lyrics were “me and my girl” before MGMT decided to obfuscate the song’s meaning. Opener “She Works Out Too Much” is similarly retro-tuned synthpop, complete with the commands of an enthusiastic fitness instructor. “One Thing Left To Try” sounds more contemporary, but in an abstract way where it sounds like a 2010s electronic act that looked back a few decades for ideas. Yes, every other indie band has milked the 80s for synthspiration, but MGMT’s proven ability to produce hits and the musical eccentricity they’ve demonstrated over a decade combine to make their efforts feel original.
Little Dark Age does err towards the band’s weirder impulses at times though, occasionally charting into the waters of Congratulations and their self-titled album. Single “When You Die” is a prime example, with synthesized plucked strings that evoke “Congratulations” and vocal pacing reminiscent of “It’s Working.” Yet things reach peak bad trip when VanWyngarden sings “We’ll all be laughing with you when you die” and a series of eerie distorted laughs emerge in the background. “When You’re Small” starts as a suspiciously muted acoustic ballad, gradually introducing more electronic noises as it builds without any conclusion. It’d be a stretch to call Little Dark Age “normal” relative to what’s on top 40 stations, but then again I never thought I’d be saying “these off-kilter parts feel out of place on an MGMT album,” given their last two releases.
The most intriguing parts of Little Dark Age are the moments that don’t fit neatly into the accessible pop – experimental oddness continuum, and feel like new ground for the duo. “Tslamp,” an acronym for the song’s repeated lyric “time spent looking at my phone” has a dub tinge to it, and “Days that Got Away” shows what would happen if MGMT tried their hand at reviving chillwave. An ode to their touring guitarist, “James” features VanWyngarden singing in a lower register than usual, apparently an effect of taking too much acid and then screaming for hours. The result vaguely resembles an Empire of the Sun outtake. These moments may not capture your attention as much as the effervescent pop tracks on the album, but they do show MGMT’s ability to experiment in a more accessible, less-psychedelic direction.
Above all else, Little Dark Age is an extremely self-aware album that shows MGMT grappling with their crossroads as a band. They know their second and third albums were unpopular. They acknowledge that Little Dark Age is a deliberate attempt to write pop music again after a decade-long break from it. The video for the most radio-friendly song, “Me and Michael,” shows the band receiving a note that says “It’s a hit song” and fans hold signs reading “MGMT are back.” And the album closes with “Hand It Over,” a slower song that begins with reflections on Trump’s election but then pivots to introspective lyrics about the band, including “if we lose our touch, it won’t mean much.” Cynics may think MGMT are begrudgingly making pop music to be relevant again, and that their last two albums were their “true” selves, but MGMT had nothing to lose. It’s become cliché to call Little Dark Age a “return” for MGMT, but it shows once again that the duo can make great, readily enjoyable music that still feels genuine.
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