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**MGMT - Little Dark Age**
★★★★☆

After wandering through the experimental wilderness for the better part of a decade, Andrew VanWyngarden and Ben Goldwasser have finally remembered what made them compelling in the first place. *Little Dark Age*, MGMT's fourth studio album, finds the duo emerging from their self-imposed exile in the avant-garde trenches, blinking in the daylight like creatures who've rediscovered the art of crafting actual songs.

The journey to this moment has been nothing if not circuitous. Following the massive commercial success of 2007's *Oracular Spectacular* – a record that spawned the inescapable earworms "Time to Dance" and "Electric Feel" – MGMT seemed determined to alienate their newfound fanbase with increasingly obtuse offerings. 2010's *Congratulations* was a deliberate middle finger to accessibility, while 2013's self-titled effort dove even deeper into psychedelic abstraction, leaving many wondering if the band had permanently lost the plot.

But *Little Dark Age* suggests that MGMT's detour through the experimental undergrowth wasn't time wasted – it was necessary preparation. The album crackles with the confidence of a band that's finally figured out how to marry their pop instincts with their more adventurous impulses. This is synth-pop reimagined through a kaleidoscope of influences, from Kraftwerk's robotic precision to New Order's melancholic euphoria, all filtered through MGMT's distinctly American brand of psychedelic unease.

The album's masterstroke is its title track, a six-minute opus that builds from whispered paranoia to full-blown electronic catharsis. Over a hypnotic motorik beat, VanWyngarden delivers apocalyptic visions wrapped in the most seductive of packages: "Forgiving who you are for what you stand to gain / Just know that if you hide, it doesn't go away." It's a song that captures the zeitgeist without beating you over the head with it, political without being preachy, danceable despite its underlying dread.

"When You Die" serves as the album's most immediate pop moment, its bouncing bassline and sing-along chorus recalling the band's breakthrough era while maintaining the sophistication they've gained in the interim. There's something beautifully perverse about packaging existential terror in such an irresistibly catchy wrapper – it's classic MGMT, really, sugar-coating the bitter pill of reality.

The album's emotional centrepiece arrives with "Me and Michael," a touching tribute to VanWyngarden's late friend Michael that doubles as the record's most straightforward love song. Stripped of the usual layers of irony and obfuscation, it reveals a vulnerability that's been largely absent from MGMT's work since their earliest days. The track's gentle pulse and yearning vocals create a pocket of warmth in an otherwise chilly landscape.

Elsewhere, "TSLAMP" (an acronym for "Time Spent Looking at My Phone") offers a surprisingly tender meditation on digital-age isolation, while "Days That Got Away" closes the album with a wistful reflection on time's passage that feels genuinely moving rather than merely clever. Even when the band indulges in their more experimental tendencies – the industrial clatter of "She Works Out Too Much" or the ambient drift of "Hand It Over" – there's a sense of purpose that was often missing from their previous efforts.

The production, handled by the band alongside Patrick Wimberly and Ariel Rechtshaid, strikes an ideal balance between lo-fi charm and studio polish. The sound is crisp enough to let every synthesizer sparkle while maintaining the slightly weathered quality that gives these songs their emotional weight. It's the sound of a band that's learned when to embrace imperfection.

*Little Dark Age* arrives at a moment when the world feels increasingly untethered from reality, and MGMT have crafted a perfect soundtrack for these strange times. It's an album that acknowledges the darkness while refusing to surrender to it entirely, finding beauty in the breakdown and hope in the ruins. After years of wilful obscurity, MGMT have remembered that the best pop music has always been about making the unbearable bearable, transforming anxiety into art, fear into feeling.

This is MGMT's most cohesive statement since *Oracular Spectacular*, but it's also their most mature. They've finally figured out how to be weird and wonderful