Edgy, but with a penchant for grand gestures: the Californians refine their pop.
“I’m dancing on the wall when I’m with you”. This is what Muna sings in the title track of their fourth album DANCING ON THE WALL. Anyone who thinks of Lionel Richie and his dancing on the ceiling is absolutely right – and wrong at the same time. Because on the one hand, what the Californians are doing is extremely plausible. But where pure euphoria reigns with Richie, here it falls into emptiness, becoming a teetering state between attraction and exclusion. “On the wall” doesn’t mean overcoming gravity, but rather bouncing off the wall.
With that: Welcome to the world of Muna. For almost ten years they have been standing for pop songs that draw from the (synth) pop of the 80s and 90s, but they never become copyists. Above all, they stand for a counterculture – not just queer – and are amplifiers and correctives at the same time. Means: They sing about the realities of life that involve complex relationship dynamics and a country that has long been in ruins.
Musically, a lot of things also collide. Although the choruses are still great, the vocals still juggle wonderfully with the melody itself. At the same time, however, more breaks and empty spaces are allowed, and Muna increasingly allows themselves to use patterns from electronic music. That definitely makes sense, listen to the final one, for example “Buzzkiller”, where a stoic machine beat is given a lot of desperation. At the end the violins cry briefly. We cry with you.
