MGMT has announced their upcoming album, Loss of Life, with pre-orders available now on the band’s website and streaming platforms. MGMT—which consists of artists Andrew VanWyngarden and Ben Goldwasser—teased a new album about a month ago with some cryptic posts on Reddit, but now they’ve officially announced their first new LP since 2018.
Videos by American Songwriter
Earlier this year, VanWyngarden posted in the MGMT subreddit in response to a fan asking for new music. “I’d say there’s a 99.999% chance mgmt releases a new full-length album sometime in 2023,” he wrote at the time. Bump that up to 100% now, because Loss of Life comes out on February 23, 2024.
The band announced the album, which will be their fifth, with a video for the newest single, “Mother Nature.” Loss of Life will consist of 10 tracks, with a song featuring Christine and the Queens titled Dancing in Babylon.” MGMT has never featured another band or artist on any tracks before, so this is an exciting first from the duo.
[RELATED: MGMT, Best Coast, The Kills Pay Tribute to Fleetwood Mac]
According to a report from Clash Music, the band put out a statement regarding the new LP. “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 [record label] Mom+Pop,” they said. “Musically speaking, we are running at around 20% adult contemporary and no more than this, please.”
MGMT’s last album was Little Dark Age from 2018, which was their first new music in five years at the time. LDA peaked at No. 35 on the Billboard 200 and was generally well-received. Critics found it was a return to how MGMT wrote and produced their first album, Oracular Spectacular. In a 2018 interview with Relix, VanWyngarden said of the album, “The way we wrote [Little Dark Age] was a lot more like how we used to write in college. One of us would have an idea, or just send over chords, bass and drums, and then the other person would add another part or the next section. We built the songs like that.”
The new single, “Mother Earth,” has more of a guitar-based sound, but contains familiar vocals. It possesses an open feeling, more accessible than some of MGMT’s previous work. While it’s a tad commercial, it’s still a promising look into what the rest of the album could sound like.
Photo by Noam Galai/Getty Images for Sony Hall
