MGMT (Andrew VanWyngarden and Ben Goldwasser) officially announced their new album, “Loss of Life,” and shared its first single, “Mother Nature,”
“Loss of Life” is due out February 23rd, 2024 via Mom + Pop Records and will be the band’s first new album in six years. Long time collaborator Jordan Fish directed the “Mother Nature” video, which combines animation with live action. In a press release, MGMT collectively say that “Mother Nature” “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.”
The song’s video is about two animal friends, simply named Dog and Turtle, who “team up to take down an evil pet collector,” according to the press release.
“I hope the story makes people happy and feel connected to family, friends and the animal kingdom as well,” says Fish.
“Loss of Life” is the band’s fifth album and the follow-up to 2018’s “Little Dark Age”, which many viewed as a return to form and was released via Columbia (as were their previous albums). “Little Dark Age’s” title track became a viral hit during the pandemic and is the band’s third most streamed song of all-time, behind their early hits “Electric Feel” and “Kids.”
This time the duo worked with producer Patrick Wimberly (Beyoncé, Lil Yachty) and longtime collaborator Dave Fridmann (The Flaming Lips, Spoon). As he’s done with all their previous albums, Fridmann mixed “Loss of Life”. There also additional production work done on the album by Daniel Lopatin (aka Oneohtrix Point Never), Brian Burton (aka Danger Mouse) and James Richardson. Miles A. Robinson was also an associate producer and engineer on the album.
“Loss of Life” includes the first ever feature appearance on an MGMT album when Christine and the Queens appear on the song “Dancing in Babylon.”
MGMT had this to say about “Loss of Life”: “All joking aside (never!), we are very proud of this album and the fact that it was a relatively painless birth after a lengthy gestation period, and are 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.”
Writer/director/The Best Show co-host Tom Scharpling has written an essay about “Loss of Life” and had this to say: “Simply put, the guys did it again! They’re now five-for-five, which last time I checked gets you into virtually any Hall of Fame. This record projects an aura of undeniable warmth throughout, an album brimming with comfortable confidence. 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.”
‘Loss Of Life’, set to arrive on 23rd February via Mom + Pop.
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