Time to pretend that this band aren’t kind of annoying, eh eh eh?
[Video][Website]
[4.50]
Scott Mildenhall: “I AM 80’S ROBOT; I FIND IT HARD TO FEEL; MY PASTICHE IS REALLY ARCH; BUT BELIEVE ME PLEASE I’M REAL”. Something like that anyway. “Little Dark Age” thrives on the clash of rigidity and groove, and the equivalent deadpanning of abstract, but somehow lucid lines like “I grieve in stereo.” If MGMT were a new band again, the promise would be rather exciting, but in this reality of how that sometimes turns out, it nevertheless recaptures some of the magic.
[8]
Katie Gill: They really want you to forget “Kids”, don’t they. With “Little Dark Age”, MGMT gives us a deliberate throwback, with obvious Cure stylings (both musically and aesthetically) mixed with more Human League synths. It’s delightfully dark but definitively derivative. MGMT don’t really give us something more than the influences.
[6]
Nortey Dowuona: Flat, unmoving synth bass. Empty, flat drums. Ringing, raspy synths. And, well… singing, I guess.
[2]
Alfred Soto: Last time these fools parlayed their canned psychedelia into enervated electronic structures. Dreaming in stereo, giddy with delight, images of the dead getting in their minds, MGMT march into the past, angling for a meditative state that eludes them.
[4]
Ian Mathers: The problem with getting big via indelible hooks is that if you switch to trying to get by on atmosphere instead it just trudges. And even by that standard this is a trudge.
[2]
Micha Cavaseno: I mean there’s a certain sense of certainty that yeah, the goals of sounding like a woolier sub-Cars new wave obscurity still has some territory to be mined, and MGMT aren’t exactly bad at doing this. But you can’t really be certain if there’s a sense of pensiveness here, hesitation or their own disinterest. Even as someone who once disliked them, you have to admit they used to have the ability to express a certain amount of propulsion and desire to inspire motion in others. Good luck finding any of that here.
[3]
Edward Okulicz: My instinct reaction when hearing one of MGMT’s hits is to punch the person playing it and destroy the audio device, because their hooks just aggravate me. I am yet to be arrested, in either sense of the word. This one’s robot-stentor narration is almost an anti-hook, and unconvincing in the extreme, but I find it oddly compelling. The track itself takes a lot of little tics from random 80s reference points and is authentically bleak. Would be an 8 if they had a singer worth a damn.
[7]
Alex Clifton: This sounds like a weird gothy AU version of the Phoenix Wright soundtracks, which is simultaneously impressive and upsetting. It could do with a minute lopping off overall — a bit turgid and melodramatic for my tastes — but is less terrible than it should be. I’m thoroughly annoyed.
[4]