All Grown Up
TWO DECADES SINCE forming MGMT as Wesleyan University students, Andrew VanWyngarden and Ben Goldwasser haven’t lost their psychedelic puckishness: Despite its grim title, their fifth album, Loss of Life (out Feb. 23), contains some of the duo’s most sincere, hopeful music yet. “Coming out of the pandemic, there was a whole wave of super doom-oriented art and music and apocalyptic shit,” VanWyngarden says of MGMT’s first album since 2018’s Little Dark Age. Loss of Life is also the act’s Mom + Pop debut (after leaving longtime label Columbia Records) and features “Mother Nature,” MGMT’s first hit on Billboard’s Alternative Airplay chart since its 2007 smashes “Time To Pretend” and “Kids.” As Van-Wyngarden says, “This album is more reflective and existential and sort of philosophical. But at the core, it’s about always going back to [the idea of] love being something that you can depend on — and that is sort of indestructible.”
You reteamed with Little Dark Age producer Patrick Wimberly and longtime studio collaborator Dave Fridmann. What do they bring to the table?
VANWYNGARDEN Considering how naive and new to everything in the music industry we were when we first met [Dave], he’s almost like a dolphin trainer. Everything we know traces back to Dave Fridmann. Patrick’s the same, really. He’s a peer; he’s a producer, but more so in the sense of helping preserve the atmosphere and the vibe.
“Time To Pretend” features prominently in Saltburn. How did that synch happen?
GOLDWASSER We were approached by the filmmakers. I had been a fan of [director Emerald Fennell’s] Promising Young Woman — so I knew it was going to be something a little out of the ordinary. VANWYNGARDEN It’s really great to be kind of passively participating in another cultural phenomenon. I’m impressed that there’s Georges Bataille-level wildness happening in this massive pop cultural film — that’s not very common. To have a song in that is cool, because we like being subversive and irreverent too.
You debuted with Oracular Spectacular almost two decades ago. How do you look back on that time?
GOLDWASSER It’s pretty wild how things get put into context. At the time, we weren’t thinking about how people were going to be writing about it 20 years later. We were young and dumb and somehow we... VANWYNGARDEN Wait, how are you going to finish that? GOLDWASSER ...are still here.