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Nov 29, 2023 By Mark Redfern

MGMT (Andrew VanWyngarden and Ben Goldwasser) are releasing a new album, Loss of Life, on February 23, 2024 via Mom + Pop. Now they have shared its second single, “Bubblegum Dog,” via a music video that pays homage to some of the classic 1990s alternative music videos. Julia Vickerman and writer/director/The Best Show co-host Tom Scharpling directed the video. Watch it below.

Vickerman and Scharpling collectively had this to say about the video in a press release: “We all saw the video for ‘Bubblegum Dog’ as an opportunity to combine the charming, DIY, surreal, cardboard craft aesthetic of shows like Yo Gabba Gabba and The Mighty Boosh with these ultra-serious grunge videos we grew up watching on MTV—all that heavy, brooding angst smashed up against absurd childlike fun.

“Ben and Andrew are legitimately funny guys, so we were excited they got to really go for it with their acting, paying homage to the eternally moody mid-’90s rock stars they looked up to when they were kids. They were completely game for everything, playing around with different wigs/costumes/personas/facial hair and continually chiming in with new ideas along the way. That was a wonderful feeling, because it let us know they were having a good time. For the climax of the video, they let us shoot gallons of pink slime at their faces, which we appreciated. Ben got quite a bit in his mouth, which was unintentional…but he thought it was funny, so then we were allowed to think it was funny.”

Previously MGMT shared the album’s first single, “Mother Nature,” via a music video. “Mother Nature” was one of our Songs of the Week.

Loss of will be the band’s first new album in six years. It is the band’s fifth album and the follow-up to 2018’s Little Dark Age, which many viewed as a return to form and was released via Columbia (as were their previous albums). Little Dark Age’s title track became a viral hit during the pandemic and is the band’s third most streamed song of all-time, behind their early hits “Electric Feel” and “Kids.”

This time the duo worked with producer Patrick Wimberly (Beyoncé, Lil Yachty) and longtime collaborator Dave Fridmann (The Flaming Lips, Spoon). As he’s done with all their previous albums, Fridmann mixed Loss of Life. There also additional production work done on the album by Daniel Lopatin (aka Oneohtrix Point Never), Brian Burton (aka Danger Mouse) and James Richardson. Miles A. Robinson was also an associate producer and engineer on the album.

Loss of Life includes the first ever feature appearance on an MGMT album when Christine and the Queens appear on the song “Dancing in Babylon.”

MGMT had this to say about Loss of Life: “All joking aside (never!), we are very proud of this album and the fact that it was a relatively painless birth after a lengthy gestation period, and are happy to be releasing this baby into the world with Mom+Pop. Musically speaking, we are running at around 20% adult contemporary and no more than this, please.”

Writer/director/The Best Show co-host Tom Scharpling has written an essay about Loss of Life and had this to say: “Simply put, the guys did it again! They’re now five-for-five, which last time I checked gets you into virtually any Hall of Fame. This record projects an aura of undeniable warmth throughout, an album brimming with comfortable confidence. There are epic tracks and intimate portraits, a little bit of glam here, some psych-folk there. It’s a slice of magic that fits perfectly into the MGMT oeuvre while expanding the boundaries once again.”

The album’s cover artwork is a 2006 painting by John Baldessari, Noses & Ears, Etc. (Part Two): Two (Flesh) Faces with (Blue) Ears and Noses, Two (Flesh) Hands, and Hobby Horse, 2006.

Read our 2018 interview with MGMT on Little Dark Age.

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