Four years since their last project, Muna — the Los Angeles-based synth pop band composed of Katie Gavin, Naomi McPherson and Josette Maskin — has returned with their fourth album, “Dancing On The Wall.” Electric and urgent, the record tracks the emotional highs and lows of dating and desire under the palpable weight of the current political moment. The result isn’t escapist, but it’s still a party.
Album opener “It Gets So Hot” is about bodies in motion and sweat on the dance floor. The heat in question isn’t just figurative — it’s radiating from the Los Angeles pavement. “It gets so hot that I can’t even think straight / And she’s so hot when she’s putting on her makeup,” Gavin sings over a buoyant keyboard, synths creeping underneath. The writing is tight, the chorus booming, the production by McPherson — with those round, reverberating drums — recalling sound effects that might accompany a cable TV news flash.
That reference, intentional or not, adds to the feeling that these songs are set in a world of contradictory experiences. It is the exuberance or excitement that can exist alongside despair, the way anxiety can oscillate from being personal and existential.
That’s part of the approach to “Big Stick,” the record’s most politically-pointed song. Gavin sings about the numbing influence of power: from the government, the media, wealthy individuals to influencers, and how it encourages group-think and the acceptance of atrocities. “And I control the airwaves I control the news so / I can make you want anything that I want you to,” she sings in the chorus. Examples of what that “anything” is intensifies as the song continues: “Make you want to build an army and wage a war,” she sings. The lyrics are expansive, the message unwavering.
Bold drums and warped backing vocals underline Gavin’s voice across the album, placing these tracks firmly within Muna’s synth pop discography. And like they’ve become known for, the songs are danceable, queer and unapologetically Los Angeles — written with an insider’s attention to detail without becoming exclusionary. The addictive “Eastside Girls,” a L.A.-based lesbian reimagining of Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire,” is a burning example.
But above all, these songs are of the moment. Amid everything, there is still love and lust — and those things too, aren’t uncomplicated. “I know how to hurt myself on you,” Gavin sings on the title track. The melancholic “Buzzkiller,” sums up the complicated nature of feeling all of that at once. “You think I’m so easy to love / Baby please you’re just buzzed,” she sings. “I’m a buzzkiller.”
Gone is the weightless freedom of their breakthrough single “Silk Chiffon.” But the dance floor still calls.
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“Dancing On The Wall” by Muna
Four stars out of five.
On repeat: “Eastside Girls,” “Dancing On The Wall”
Skip it: “Party’s Over,” “Unless …”
For fans of: Dancing on your own, waiting by the phone, Los Angeles, hot city streets