MGMT: Little Dark Age

It's hard to believe when listening to MGMT's fourth album that this band was once dominating modern rock radio with three consecutive smash hit singles.  On their 2007 debut Oracular Spectacular, the psychedelic two-piece displayed an uncanny ability to craft danceable art-pop jams.  In hindsight, Oracular Spectacular is still their best work- even if it's not exactly spectacular all the way through.  Kids, Electric Feel, and Time to Pretend are still great songs.  And about half of that album is still tuneless filler.

MGMT's fourth album, Little Dark Age, finds the band settling into a sound that's both more accessible than their previous two albums, and far more lightweight than their early successes.  The brazen experimentation of their self-titled days has been softened in exchange for a more traditional song structure, but nothing here sounds immediate or catchy.  I would never suggest that MGMT should attempt to write Kids over and over again, but it seems like they've spent the past ten years determinedly avoiding any big hooks whatsoever.  And I can't help but wonder if MGMT's own MGMT ever sits the band down for a little talk:  "Can you guys even try to write a big chorus, for old time's sake?" 

Little Dark Age is listenable, and some songs flirt with payoff.  The closest any song comes to catchy is probably Me and Michael, which wouldn't have been out of place in an early 80's high school movie.  But at least half the songs on Little Dark Age give off the impression that MGMT just isn't trying all that hard to rise above synth-pop background noise- and the live show I caught last year sadly confirmed that impression.  (The less said about that snarky, phoned-in performance, the better.  Maybe they were having a bad night.)

If anything, Little Dark Age is more mature (and ironically lighter) than their last two albums.  And any band that can hit the scene on the strength of a song like Time To Pretend is worth checking in with from time to time.  But there's a big difference between checking in and keeping up.  C-