The album begins with part 2
of the title song for MGMT’s Loss of Life,
and overlays one of the most beautiful
instrumental melodies I’ve ever heard
with a spoken word sample of John Stewart
Parker (a guy who is entirely absent
from my google search results), and
his old-poet-guy-style reading of a poem
called “I Am Taliesin. I Speak Perfect Metre,”
a poem that, as I understand it, comes
from 12th century England or Ireland
and has no author attribution: Anon.
It’s a strange, but bold move, setting
the tone for this dreamy pop record
with lovely melodies and lyrics that
alternate between the absurd and
poetic, the philosophical and the
sentimental. It’s a sweet, lilting,
and chill record of mostly synths,
pianos, drums that may or may not
be electronic, and the soothing and
quiet vocals of Andrew VanWyngarden.
Ben Goldwasser is the other half
of this songwriting duo that calls
itself MGMT, active since the early
part of the 21st century, but as of
this year of 2026, brand new to me.
I streamed this album a few times
before I bought it, thinking to myself,
this is good stuff, but it sure is
kind of sleepy, while simultaneously
finding its melodic movement and
hooky choruses and lyrics
irresistible. That beautiful melody
that begins the album underneath
medieval English poetry is fleshed
out with lyrics and vocals on the
last track, part one of “Loss of Life.”
It is a very odd way to bookend an
otherwise cheerful record, but poignant
and devastatingly honest: “Nothing
prepares you for loss of life.”
The album and the song concludes
with this bittersweet, strange quatrain:
“When the world is born and life is ending
Then you learn to love your loss of life
When that moment comes and life is over
Anyone can love.”
It listens better than it reads, I know,
but it strikes me as one of the things
I love: when pop music grapples,
as literature does, with the very
biggest ideas of our lives, and likely
there is no bigger subject for human
beings than loss of life.
Notes on the vinyl edition: Loss of Life, Mom + Pop Records, 2024, opaque blue vinyl.
In case you don’t already know: I’m listening to almost everything in my vinyl collection, A to Z, and writing at least one, sometimes two or three long skinny poem-like-things in response for each artist, and on a few occasions, writing a long skinny poem-like-thing in response to more than one artist. As a poet and a student of poetry, I understand that these things look like poems, but they don’t really sound much like poetry, hence, I call them “poem-like-things.” I’ll admit that they’re just long, skinny essays that veer every now and then into the poetic or lyric.
michael jarmer 