The Cure-inspired MGMT Comeback Is Exactly What We Need Right Now

It’s all about timing. And often a band has to run an awkward line from the gap on the usual album/tour cycle, to the extended break - often to ‘explore other interests’, which can become the ‘hiatus’, and suddenly it’s all slipped away and it’s the nostalgic ‘reunion farewell dates’. Oops.

One finding their way before fashions change or memories fade and they become just a music trivia night question, MGMT’s first thing in just over four years is Little Dark Age (Columbia). Much of the old tumble is there, but it’s not quite the glittery ramblings of something like Kids. There’s something a bit gothic among the electronic. Musically - and maybe even visually - Ben and Andrew and whoever else is in the changeable working unit these days, with added production and guidance from Flaming Lip Dave Fridmann end up making pop music suitable for Halloween use, on a line that wobbles unapologetically somewhere between Sparks and The Cure. Oddly, it seems to work, and seems to still identifiably them.

Further along that opening track, A Perfect Circle haven’t released new music in a decade, or toured in a half of one. But Maynard James Keenan’s other other thing obviously still consider this pop music thing a serious business. This is ‘alt-metal-art-rock’, apparently. Checklist: it’s called The Doomed (BMG), and lyrical concerns include war, famine, death, Jesus, fornicants (yeah, ok…) and moods that flick from reflection, to angst, to general sooking about the world, and then the guitars crash in again. Throw in former Smashing Pumpkin James Iha to add to the widescreen oppressiveness in the sound, and formerly disaffected youth now in their 30s and 40s will pull on their black t-shirts and mope about it all in a suitably grumpy manner.

An even better trick is to retain affection for over 20 years, but then offer new music that still has some vitality and originality to it. Surveys of those who were indie kids in the ‘80s and ‘90s – particularly in Sydney and Brisbane home territories – will just about always mention Big Heavy Stuff, Atticus, and their collective precursor Ups & Downs as the bands they’d most like to see return in some form. The brothers Atkinson – individually key parts of the abovementioned – have been doing low-key, somewhat more experimental, work as The Worker Bees. But now they’ve bit the bullet, and reactivated the U&D name with True Love Waste (Basketcase) which comes with their old mix of jangle and muscle intact. Complete here with added muppets.

Others evolve out of their band guises. Formerly (of?) Teeth & Tongue, Jess Cornelius’ music has become ever more bare and personal. Besides stealing a potential title for my autobiography, Love & Low Self-Esteem is fearsomely honest – opening up and bleeding in a quietly raw manner. Self-deprecating without being self-pitying. There’s the counterpoint of some occasional Joni Mitchell-adjacent trills and warbles, which is almost immediately offset by that harder 21st century self-examination. Recent touring through America with no less than Paul Kelly has likely given her even more insights to her art and herself.

And there’s always a place in the rock and/or roll for one of them precocious and snotty talents. Grace Shaw, aka Mallrat, is one of those almost terrifyingly gifted kids not yet out of her teenage years, but making a music of an almost arrogant assurance. She’s perhaps even gone beyond her own pugnacious self-description as ‘The Hannah Montana of the rap game…’ with Better (Independent), its sugar-high chorus hook alone making it pop music worthy of the overseas notices it’s already receiving.

Showing some of the difference between his live work and sound on record, Cameron Avery leaves the broken neon nightclubbing that marks a lot of the still terrific Ripe Dreams, Pipe Dreams album with this solo version of one of its centrepieces, Take It Away (Spinning Top/Anti). As he self-builds the loops and mood-swings of it, it’s scruffier and more jagged than the album version – the croon that makes for the early feeling of the more familiar replaced with an urgency, a howl and growl that draws you in then can startle you back. Helluva thing.

There’s a similar self-awareness with some ironic undertones to what Anna Burch does. A select few of you may remember her as part of arched-eyebrow kinda-folk thing Frontier Ruckus but what the Detroit native does on 2 Cool 2 Care (Polyvinyl) is probably an even more askance glance. Through an almost shiny ‘60s girl-group jangle, she admits ‘I like you best when you’re a mess…’, but knows he’s a bit of a dick with it. Conversely, she know the records she listens to might be a little unfashionable at the moment, but probably doesn’t give a shit. If you like your pop music just a bit subversive on a number of levels, get on this.