Reviews: Fischerspooner’s “Sir” and MGMT’s “Little Dark Age”
Long-awaited fourth albums from Fischerspooner and MGMT find both groups doubling down on their strengths
Nine years after Fischerspooner’s brief and perhaps ill-advised foray into electropop, fans of the electroclash pioneers can breathe a sigh of relief. Co-written and executive produced by REM’s Michael Stipe, Sir (★★★) is an early 2000s throwback that sees the duo of Casey Spooner and Warren Fischer revisit the genre they helped to define.
It’s clear from the beginning of the album that Fischerspooner are not here to dance around the point. Sir presents a raw, unabashed and unmistakably queer vision of sexuality and longing. Any hint of ambiguity around the meaning of the album’s title quickly collapses in “Stranger Stranger.” Spooner growls, yelps and cries out over a deep, prowling bass line: “Yes, sir! Can I call you sir? You make me feel so good,” eventually fizzling out on the line “Sir, please respond.” The music videos Fischerspooner released for the album’s singles are not here to play around either. The sexually charged video for “TopBrazil” carries their ethos to its logical extreme, consisting of a crowd of writhing men in various states of undress. Granted, it’s no “House of Air,” but it’s about as explicit as one can get without running onto the wrong end of YouTube’s adult content policies.
Any proud and unflinching celebration of sexuality is welcome, but the pair would be remiss if they didn’t also justify their return with some downright excellent music. Here, the results are more uneven. Leading an album with the incomparable “Stranger Stranger” seems like a risky gamble in retrospect, since shock value aside, it is also an example of Fischerspooner at their very best. Still, while Sir may be strongest on its opener, the remaining singles certainly hold up as fantastic tracks on their own.
As strong as Sir is in places, Fischerspooner lose the thread somewhat as they revisit the same themes a few too many times. The juxtaposition of hedonistic abandon and the bleakness of confronting one’s own mortality in the middle of it is an interesting one at first, but it bears diminishing returns over time — hearing them return to the same well over and over becomes tiresome. The tense and introverted eighth track “Get It On” stands out as the one worthwhile interlude, and would be more bearable if it did not have to share billing with four or five other tracks treading the same subject matter and falling back on the same slow, plodding beat.
After almost a decade, we might have hoped for more from Fischerspooner, but the album’s high points are as good as anything else the duo ever produced at their best.
MGMT IS ONE OF THOSE RARE bands that has managed to ride the wave of a debut album over a decade after the fact. Any group that can sell out tours and headline festivals despite some decidedly uninspiring studio work in the meantime must be doing something right, and MGMT seems to have cracked the code. Bursting onto the scene comes with risks of its own, however, as any band will probably tell you that a debut album as strong as Oracular Spectacular can become a monkey on their back with every subsequent record. For a while, it seemed like MGMT might follow this pattern, with two reasonably commercially successful but ultimately unimpressive albums. As it turns out, a hiatus and a bit of soul-searching can do wonders. Little Dark Age (★★★★) shakes off the malaise that MGMT found themselves in over the past few years and is the first album since their debut to even come close to the impressiveness of Oracular.
Although Little Dark Age hearkens back to the band’s earlier work, it is far from a retread. The album has a streamlined, more organic sound than their previous releases, with a synth-heavy vibe that owes much to the pop of the mid-eighties. They still sound unmistakably like MGMT, but dark, moody synths and jazz-indebted bass lines lend a deeper, richer layer to their trademark neo-psychedelia. Lead single “Little Dark Age” is the definite standout of the album, opening with an angst-filled slow burn of a beat that builds up to an explosive chorus.
Aside from being a sonically more cohesive, put together record than its predecessors, Little Dark Age is more mature in its approach to its subject matter as well. Occasionally, MGMT do fall back into old habits to the album’s detriment. It never gets quite as bad as it did on 2013’s MGMT, but it is still a shallow stab at irony for its own sake that distracts from the album’s truly great moments, which play to their strengths and see them explore new avenues to great effect. Little Dark Age is a surprising and welcome change of pace for MGMT.
Little Dark Age and Sir are available now to buy on Amazon.com and iTunes, and on streaming services.
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