Review Summary: defibrillator
Let's talk about age. I've always wondered if taste degradation over time is inevitable. It seems like no matter how fascinated people are with innovation, how permanent their interest seems, they end up hating the new things that come out and don't appeal to the things they decided were Good when they were in their 20s, if not earlier in their lives. They declare anything else to be Bad, usually paired with some misinformed sense of objectivity. I know that's present in the music critique world, but it seems like artists tend to understand the pulse of music's body a lot better than the rest of us. MGMT are an example of a band that have had their finger on and off of it. Their peak in popularity seemed spontaneous and resonated in the biggest veins in music. "Kids" sounded like a perfect crossover between the dark chiptune of "Crimewave" and the more approachable pop of "Lisztomania," which resulted in their success in both the blog house scene (they grabbed Justice and Soulwax remixes that year, along with Last.FM's "Most Played New Artist" award), as well as the mainstream ("Kids" ended up going platinum). Since then, they've never been quite as cool.
Congratulations and
MGMT felt less current, and often even seemed pandering to a retro aesthetic. MGMT circa
Oracular Spectacular and especially
Time To Pretend felt and were futuristic, with their impact striking the music scene later in artists like Foster The People, fun. and Ke$ha. They haven't had that success since, sadly, and not for lack for trying.
Little Dark Age hits five years since their last album, and Andrew and Ben are very aware of the general consensus of the various elements to their discography. In a review with Rolling Stone, they said: "a lot of people wrote us off after the third record…They were like, 'Oh, they have no pop juice left in them. It's not happening again.'" This time around, however, they're more accessible than they've been in years. "She Works Out Too Much" and "Little Dark Age," with their obvious synthpop influences, sound like they've finally moved on from Flaming Lips worship to an acceptance of less psychedelic influences like New Order and The Cure, which ironically leads to a more psychedelic feel. When they stop trying quite so hard to find the pulse, they are a lot cooler, which is always obvious in hindsight but understandably difficult to actually live by, especially since this is a band that never really tried to just make music the fans wanted. They infamously (although very briefly) refused to play "Kids" at some of their 2013 shows. Their last two albums show that they clearly haven't been chasing after commercial success. There wasn't so much haphazardly storming through genre aisles for the missing "pop juice" (like so many bands dealing with sophomore slumps do) as they are happening to find it again while looking for something else off their list. In fact, they claim Trump's election inspired the optimistic songwriting more than anything else, with even the name of the album referring to his hopefully short term.
So, background aside,
Little Dark Age kind of holds up. It's the best MGMT album since
Oracular Spectacular, if that's what you liked. This album is fun, full of memorable melodies and relatable lyrics. "When You Die" is the most outright they've ever really been, telling an unknown listener to "go f*** yourself," spitting on those who try to take advantage of kindness. If you're more of a
Congratulations person, it claims much of the maturity of that era as well. There is a lot of depth here. "Days That Got Away" is the "Siberian Breaks" of this album, but less needlessly lengthy and more cathartic, the melancholy music betraying the emotional core of a band often too concerned with complexity to be genuine. But for as many highlights as it has, there's still a lot of filler. After the first three tracks finish, it sets quickly into letdown territory, making listening feel like a chore for a while. "TSLAMP" is a lament of Andrew's "existence, combining a 1980's electro beat with a ‘La Isla Bonita’ and a Margo Guryan chorus", and it feels like that's all they had in mind; some sort of this extended jam session about millennial self-frustration. "Hand It Over" just sorts of drifts off into nothing at the conclusion, falling asleep into a phaser when it could be an anthem of rebellion and resistance.
As much as I'd like to say that this is MGMT's return to form, it's not quite there. It's not bad by any means. I think my most honest assessment is that this is a good album, not excellent, not innovative, definitely not flawless, but good. This is a band that some say has been coasting off the continued attention the Facebook likes from a hit single bring for more than a decade, and they're still not doing everything they can to prove their worth. Of course, they don't need to, they can afford to not. Meanwhile, listeners who really care about the band will probably enjoy the album, and it'll certainly be a nice listen for 80s revivalists, but I wouldn't say that it's worth a try for the average person, which is sad, because they've shown us before that they have it in them.
