MGMT, the acclaimed Connecticut band led by Ben Goldwasser and Andrew VanWyndarden, has released a new single from their forthcoming fifth studio album, Loss of Life. The song, "Nothing to Declare," is the third single to be issued in advance of the album, which is scheduled to be released on February 23.
In addition to releasing the single, MGMT have also issued a video for the song. Directed by Joey Frank, the video stars Inga Petry, a student at the University of Pittsburgh who was born with upper limb aplasia and has found a following on social media through her posts on such outlets as Instagram and TikTok.
Benjamin Goldwasser of MGMT performing at Eventim Apollo on December 13, 2018 in London, England
“When I first saw Inga on TikTok, I imagined her as the star of a foreign film. A certain brand of 1990’s European independent cinema typified by the Dardenne brothers always essentially follows a human navigating through life,” Frank told NME. “Inga has been armless all her life, which lends a different kind of vulnerability to the simple narrative of a self-possessed young woman travelling from Pittsburgh to Paris. In real life, Inga puts herself online in a very candid way on TikTok, but the ‘Nothing to Declare’ MGMT music video plays on the aesthetics of independent cinema to allow the audience a different sort of emotional fictive space with Inga as ingenue.”
[There's a tip of the hat to Frank's love of foreign films at the 1:37 mark, when a poster for Amelie can be spotted as Petry strolls through the streets of Paris.]
The forthcoming Loss of Life LP will be MGMT’s first full-length endeavor for their new label, Michael Goldstone’s Mom + Pop Records, which they share with such artists as Beach Bunny, Maya Hawke, Tom Morello, Sleater-Kinney, and Tegan and Sara. VanWyngarden and Goldwasser co-produced the majority of the album with the assistance of Patrick Wimberly, with mixing duties resting in the capable hands of Dave Fridmann, although James Richardson assisted on the track “Dancing in Babylon,” which features guest vocals from Christine and the Queens.
In a semi-formal statement about the impending release of Loss of Life, MGMT said, “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.”
