MGMT has announced details of its first album in six years, Loss of Life, which will be the duo’s debut release for new label Mom + Pop after a decade-plus run at Columbia Records. Due Feb. 23, the 10-track LP finds Andrew VanWyngarden and Ben Goldwasser working with producer Patrick Wimberly, with further contributions from Daniel Lopatin (Oneohtrix Point Never) and Brian Burton (Danger Mouse).
First single “Mother Nature” is out today (Oct. 31) in tandem with an animated video from longtime MGMT collaborator Jordan Fish. The band says the song “outlines the archetypical MGMT mythology of one hero attempting to get the other hero to come on the journey that they ‘must’ go on. One part sounds like Oasis.” Adds Fish of the video, which stars Dog and Turtle, “I hope the story makes people happy and feel connected to family, friends and the animal kingdom as well.”
MGMT describes the making of Loss of Life as “a relatively painless birth after a lengthy gestation period, and [is] happy to be releasing this baby into the world with Mom+Pop. Musically speaking, we are running at around 20% adult contemporary and no more than this, please.” The Best Show‘s Tom Scharpling has also written an essay about the album, which he says “projects an aura of undeniable warmth throughout. There are epic tracks and intimate portraits, a little bit of glam here, some psych-folk there. It’s a slice of magic that fits perfectly into the MGMT oeuvre while expanding the boundaries once again.”
Among the songs are “Dancing in Babylon,” with Christine and the Queens turning in the first feature on an MGMT album to date.
Loss of Life is the follow-up to 2018’s Little Dark Age, the title track of which became a long-running TikTok hit during the first stage of the COVID-19 pandemic. At one point, it was being streamed as much 658,000 times per day on Spotify and is now MGMT’s third-most streamed track there, behind only “Kids” and “Electric Feel” from the band’s 2007 star-making debut, Oracular Spectacular. That album was produced by Dave Fridmann, who mixed Loss of Life.
In May, MGMT played it first proper show since November 2019 with the debut complete performance of Oracular Spectacular at the Just Like Heaven festival in Pasadena, Ca. So far, the group has not announced tour dates for 2024, but as Goldwasser told SPIN last year about the potential influx of new fans in the wake of the “Little Dark Age” viral moment, “it will be really interesting to see how the crowds will have changed whenever we get back to playing live, and whether that may carry over to some of the other tracks off the album too, which would be great. People criticize the TikTok generation for having no sense of context or history, but if you spent 10 minutes there, it would completely prove that false. Kids are incredibly smart and literate and are pulling together all these references. It’s pretty amazing.”
Here is the track list for Loss of Life:
Loss of Life (part 2)
Mother Nature
Dancing in Babylon (featuring Christine and the Queens)
People in Tthe Streets
Bubblegum Dog
Nothing To Declare
Nothing Changes
Phradie’s Song
I Wish I Was Joking
Loss of Life
