REVIEW: MGMT - LOSS OF LIFE

4/5

Love and Loss.

It's no longer time to pretend. The fifth album from psychedelic synth pop act MGMT is here. And with a 'Loss Of Life', it's all change for the 'Oracular Spectacular' legend's first release since the smartphone checking live album '11.11.11' of 2022. For one, the French icon of Christine and the Queens appears on the delightful 'Dancing In Babylon', marking the first guest appearance featuring on an album from collaborators Andrew VanWyngarden and Benjamin Goldwasser. 'Congratulations', Chris. Their first album on the new Mom + Pop label is also their first studio one in six years since the 'Little Dark Age' of 2018 and what a return it is. Marked by the sweet singles (like the latest with the Queens), 'Mother Nature', 'Bubblegum Dog' and 'Nothing To Declare', across the airport in a music video starring YouTube inspiration Inga Petry. 

Rocking on the horse of a classic album cover, it's actually the 'Love and Loss' title-track(s) in both their parts (the second starting and setting everything off) that really hit home now the duo are back where they belong. Channelling indie rock and even Britpop in an Oasis of a Blur, MGMT still know how to push the envelope, even though, in this post Empire Of The Sun age, where they now seem like a throwback akin to The Strokes, they aren't dressing up like they're about to drop all sorts at Woodstock. The test pressing of this "elf of soils" with a Warhol like banana on top is art, just when you thought these two were going to split and part. "LOL", this anagram really does cook for the fans on Insta who know what we're talking about. The pair, proud of what they dub a, "relatively painless birth after a lengthy gestation period", are pregnant with pure sounds for an immaculate conception. 'People In The Streets' can see and hear the highlight that graffities lyrics like, "Life keeps on going/Showing you things that you can't unsee/In the sense of unknowing why/Anything happens to be/And just as the sun comes out again/Something is blocking the light/But it's alright/The inside's still glowing/Telling the heart what it wants to hear/But what if it's only lies/Twisted apart by fear?" What if indeed, in this perplexed day and age in need of the natural high, Goldwasser and VanWyngarden bring in the gold of their Eden.

Nothing to declare? Well, 'Nothing Changes' they say in words that may actually do that to you if you haven't experienced loss and life's wounds yet. "This is what the birds must have been squawking about/Right before the dream was ending/And maybe you'd have heard if you'd stopped f###### around/When it was time to stop pretending." We told 'The Youth', the time for pretending was over. Well kids, here you have it. It's been a long time since that Patrick Wimberly produced 'Electric Feel', but it's still in there somewhere, and he is too, manning the boards for that sonic studio sound. From 'Phradie's Song' to the title track classic closer that bookends this second-career breakthrough as successful as the 2022 comeback album from the similar sounding, same vein The Mars Volta. Attacking sounds in space and time, 'I Wish I Was Joking' when I said these lines will stay with you down your own one. But when you hear "Half of love is still love/You beg the dawn to ease you in/Pass the time a thousand ways/In the dump, you'll find love/Half the time, I feel sad/And any kind of love will do/But it’s a job, don't know if that's the dream/In a style that’s insincere" you may not look at life the same way again. As we treat love like a ghost that slow fades out like a track on your old CDs, and life like something to swipe past on to the next. But in the same track that references 'Disney On Ice' (who saw that coming?), they tell us, "Here's the thing about drugs/They'll sink your mind and steal your friends," this is the loss the partnership were referring to. The purple haze may have gone to a sombre black tone, but this album is seriously good. Just like life, if you treat it as such. In all its beauty and brutality. For at the end of this dark night, an electric day will rise again. TIM DAVID HARVEY.

Playlist Picks: 'Dancing In Babylon (Feat. Christine and the Queens)', 'People In The Streets', 'Nothing Changes'.