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MGMT: Loss of Life review | Alexis Petridis's album of the week
The newly viral US duo seem to take inspiration from Bowie, Simon and Garfunkel and the Gallagher brothers on an album of glossy, impressively melodic psychedelic pop
Now, 5.5m TikTok videos and nearly 600m Spotify streams later, MGMT’s profile is higher than at any point since their 2007 debut album Oracular Spectacular went from critical cause célèbre to mainstream commercial success, selling more than a million copies in the process. A duet with Christine and the Queens, Dancing in Babylon, could slot on to the soundtrack of an 80s blockbuster, wereit not liberally decorated with keyboards that twist and bend off-key and crackling noise; on People in the Streets, lyrics which return fretfully to the insurrectionary theme of Little Dark Age (“I’d go and join them, but I’m so scared”) are threaded around the sound of that none-more-80s signifier, a fretless bass. Phradie’s Song might possess the sweetest melody MGMT have written to date, its feather-soft, chanson-inspired tune butting against the dramatic swell of its synth coda; I Wish I Was Joking glides gracefully along, spiked with funny lines: “Nobody calls me the gangster of love,” it protests, a self-deprecating retort to the smug boasts of Steve Miller’s old hit The Joker.
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