As the release of MGMT's next album chapter nears, the American group have shared the third single lifted from 'Loss Of Life' – the joyously charming and glorious 'Nothing To Declare'.
It features the band's trademark lo-fi, psychedelic, eccentric brand of warped-pop indietronica that sounds like a Beach Boys, Beck and The Shins lovechild that remains uniquely MGMT."Hello again MGMTers. It's time for another song and video from the forthcoming album “Loss Of Life'," MGMT posted. "Today we give you 'Nothing To Declare'. This is sort of a deep cut from the album, but we loved director Joey Frank's vision so much we had to show it to the world.
"We are very grateful to Inga Petry for making the trip from Pittsburgh to Paris and helping create this moving addition to the MGMT video universe. See if you can spot Andrew and Ben as they flash like hallucinations throughout."
Frank spoke about the video's concept: "When I first saw Inga on TikTok, I imagined her as the star of a foreign film. A certain brand of 1990s European independent cinema typified by the Dardenne brothers always essentially follows a human navigating through life.
"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."
Inga, who was born with upper limb aplasia, is a student at University of Pittsburgh where she studies philosophy and pre-law. "When I was first approached by Joey to do this project, it was the parallelism in his vision that first drew me in.
"We listened to 'Nothing To Declare' as he took me through the concept of the video and I was met with the juxtaposition of beauty and melancholy.
"Having grown up with no arms, I have been watched my whole life. In some respects, the Venus de Milo has always felt analogous to my life, and specifically to the character I portray in this film. She's adored, respected, and almost constantly surrounded by people, and yet she stands alone and her past is unknown.
"There have always been questions surrounding her arms and she has never had to answer or prove her worth. From my perspective, she has nothing to declare. Playing this character that is different, and not just because she doesn't have arms, but by the way she handles the difference and still feeds on new curiosity was a really beautiful experience."
Creators of such iconic bangers as 'Kids' and 'Electric Feel', amongst an eclectically sublime back catalogue, Andrew VanWyngarden and Ben Goldwasser's 'Loss Of Life' is the follow-up to 2018's 'Little Dark Age'.
"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," MGMT says. "Musically speaking, we are running at around 20 per cent adult contemporary and no more than this, please."
Andrew and Ben produced the ten-track project with Patrick Wimberly (Solange, Lil Yachty). While longtime collaborator Dave Fridmann (The Flaming Lips, Spoon) mixed the album – as he has done on the group's past four records.
'Loss Of Life' also features MGMT's very first album collaboration, with Christine and the Queens appear on the song 'Dancing In Babylon'.
'Loss Of Life' is released 23 February. Pre-order it.
