MGMT is a band that Geoffrey and I love so much, and feel so protective about, that we still pronounce its name “Management” just to be dicks. The Brooklyn-based neo-dance-by-way-of-surf-rock duo won me over back in 2007 with their phenomenal debut album, Oracular Spectacular, and its follow-up, Congratultions, which was my favorite album of 2010. So, it was kind of inevitable they they would fall from grace with a hard and painful thud by releasing a third album which was their own personal version of Metal Machine Music via an eponymous 2013 release that just sucked irredeemably. Yet somehow, the band ‘managed’ to not get booted from their sweet major label deal, and they are still around to be releasing a fourth album in early 2018 — yay! Today, we bring you the video for that hotly-anticipated album’s title track, “Little Dark Age.” As you will see, it was worth the wait.
Visually and thematically, “Little Dark Age” hearkens way back to the Golden Age of MTV, when bands still gave a shit about making videos that looked crazy while adding a backstory to the song. Here, we find vocalist Andrew VanWyngarden channeling his inner Robert Smith amid a cinematic music video (think: The Shining as directed by Ken Russell) featuring sinister and surreal vignettes of VanWyngarden, partner Ben Goldwasser and a supporting cast of band members and groupies having adventures in an around a spooky haunted house, all while being stalked by the figure of Death. Very scary! The video was directed by the capable team of David MacNutt and Nathaniel Axel. Aurally, “Little Dark Age” sounds like MGMT dug out their catalog of old Cure and Tubeway Army records and just went to town. High fives all around on this one.
“Little Dark Age” was produced by MGMT, Patrick Wimberly (Chairlift, Kelela, Blood Orange), and long-time collaborator Dave Fridmann (Flaming Lips, Spoon, Tame Impala) who I still love most for his work with Mercury Rev. Enjoy!
Andrew VanWyngarden Channels his Inner Robert Smith