Loss of Life is the fifth studio album by the American rock band MGMT. It was released on February 23, 2024, making it their label debut on Mom + Pop in the United States and internationally on BMG Rights Management, and their first studio album in six years since 2018's Little Dark Age. It features a guest appearance by French singer Christine and the Queens, making it the first feature on an MGMT album.
On September 21, 2023, Andrew VanWyngarden posted a picture of a vinyl "test pressing" with a banana on top on Reddit, accompanied by the caption "elf of soils". The latter was reported to be an anagram of what would be the album title. The title was first hinted at on April 5 through a photo captioned "Just got done cooking L.O.L." by VanWyngarden.
Loss of Life is the long-awaited follow-up to 2018's Little Dark Age. The album was produced by MGMT (Andrew VanWyngarden, Ben Goldwasser) along with Patrick Wimberly. Longtime collaborator Dave Fridmann mixed the album as he has done on the group's past four full lengths. On Loss of Life, additional production was supplied by Daniel Lopatin and James Richardson. Brian Burton provides additional production on "Mother Nature" and Miles A. Robinson served as associate producer and engineer across the album.
I loved MGMT’s debut album and dabbled here and there with a couple of their follow up albums and had happened to listen to this a while ago. They really hooked me with "I Wish I Was Joking".
This is more laid back than I expected but in a very good way. I loved listening to it, and the appearance of Christine and the Queens was a great addition! Definitely an album I will enjoy again.
Loss Of Life is the fifth album of MGMT. It is not a bad album, but MGMT is one of these band that has made a great debut album and the following albums do not add that much. The problem of this album is that it is overcomplete. You can listen to this album or you can give their debut album another spin.
I've listened to MGMT before, though I can't say I'm very familiar with their work. But this was not at all what I expected. It was very mellow, almost easy listening-ish. It was good though. Almost reminded me of Elliott Smith at times. Will listen again. 4 stars.
Great production and songwriting. There’s a lot going on here, so I’ll have to listen again to truly appreciate it, but it’s both fun to listen to and an album that has substance. Very well done, guys. 4/5
I hadn't listened to this one in about a year so it was nice to go back to it. There's maybe 2-3 duds mixed in, but for the most part its a really solid album with super catchy hooks and interesting instrumentation. 8/10
Okay what if I said that this is better than their debut. Some very pleasant stuff on here, glad they still got it. And sure, there might not be any big standout track on here like "Kids" or "Little Dark Age", but at least it's consistent and has no duds - something their other albums kinda struggled with.
While this album was a welcome dose of indie to see on the user list and is generally okay, it still remains pretty disappointing in the wider context of MGMT’s discography. The band showed they could rock clean production and maintain their trademark quirkiness on ‘Little Dark Age’ to great effect, so why does this album forego the band’s joie de vivre entirely? The whole thing feels so flat creatively and instrumentally, like the fun edges that define this band have been sanded off. MGMT please blink twice if you’re being held at gunpoint.
Pretty sure there's been at least one other album by this band in the list. I can't recall how it took me. I liked this but wasn't over the moon about it. A little too uniformly soft. As well, the lyrics were on the grandiose side while not being all that rich in content to my ears. It might grow on me with time.
The unique sounds what made 'Kids' and 'Time to Pretend' succesful were not exactly present in this album. That made this sound a bit more generic. It was fine, but not outstanding
MGMT has some of the coolest songs that came out post 2000. A truly unique electronic sound while still have good fun lyrics. It seems as they’ve aged they have toned down that sound a bit. This album was significantly more tame then I’d like for mgmt. it wasn’t bad but if you pay for Siegfried and Roy you want to see a tiger not a dove. 6.0/10
I enjoyed the MGMT album on the OG list but this was pretty meh. It wasn't all that interesting and just sounded devoid of creative ideas.
My personal rating: 3/5
My rating relative to the list: 3/5
Should this have been included on the original list? No.
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