Illustration by Mia Turner
If you ever listened to music in the 2000s, you’ve probably heard at least one MGMT song. Whether it was “Kids,” “Time to Pretend,” or “Electric Feel,” the band was renowned for their psychedelic electro-pop anthems. Even though their three big hits were unconditionally embraced and loved by the public, MGMT took the praise with a grain of salt.
After their 2007 debut album, Oracular Spectacular, which was named one of the top twenty albums of the decade by Rolling Stone, their fame was ubiquitous. MGMT’s music was practically playing on loop at any given Urban Outfitters or house party.
In 2010, MGMT released Congratulations, an album that explored the musical influences that originally brought Van Wyngarden and Goldwasser together, but alienated a huge chunk of their fan base. Their self-titled album, MGMT, was released the following year and pushed them even further into obscurity. By attempting to show the world the music they loved, MGMT committed career suicide.
After a five-year hiatus, their newest album, Little Dark Age, was released February of 2018. After a decade of fading in and out of the spotlight, the duo seems to have found a perfect marriage between their creative impulses and what the people want to hear. The result can best be described as synth-pop alongside the deep, ominous undercurrent that saturates all their music.
Little Dark Age plays with varying musical influences, but does so without feeling scatterbrained or unorganized. The title track of the album “Little Dark Age” goes surprisingly goth, making it abundantly clear that MGMT has totally evolved during their time in obscurity. They examine mortality in “When You Die” which is a perfect example of the band’s signature dark lyricism played over an almost aggressively lighthearted tune. “Me and Michael” is a sunny number about friendship. Little Dark Age is just adventurous enough to not come off as a desperate ploy to get back into the spotlight, and just radio-friendly enough that they might pull it off.
While the majority of the songs are poppy enough to be festival hits, the lyrics undeniably come from a place of darkness. Ultimately, the moodiness of the album makes it cohesive.
While the themes range from our unnerving relationship with technology to MGMT’s personal experience in the music industry, the overarching theme is basically “look at all this bad stuff.” The vibe can definitely be heavy-handed at times, but it’s relatable to almost everyone at this point in time.
The one hit wonder is a narrative that everyone’s comfortable with. There’s such an endless flow of music that it’s basically impossible to notice when a song slips from the charts and out of everyone’s mind. Little Dark Age was MGMT’s last chance to prove that they didn’t fit the mold, and they did so successfully. This probably doesn’t mean that MGMT is ever going to be everyone’s favorite band again, but at the least they’ll be the band that proved us wrong.