John Maus - We Must Become the Pitiless Censors of Ourselves

The glistening pop sheen filters tunnels of light into a feedback loop, smearing across your retinas and blurring your vision for a short while. When your eyes adjust you think you recognize an old acquaintance, but this figure dodges around and fades into a cloud of smoke. This light is the beacon of John Maus’ pop aspirations within the stormy world where “dead zones are a sign of times”. With trite choruses such as “and the rain came down… down, down, down”, and simple song structures, Maus toys with the dumbness of pop music, but also taps into its pleasure center and universal nature. These melodies are pure pop gold and fit pretty well into what many would deem hypnagogic. Songs like “Hey Moon” approach the feelings conjured by fellow hypnogogician Memory Tapes, while “Keep Pushing On” lies closer to the musings of Ariel Pink.

But this is in no way lo-fi. The synths glisten, the drums are straight programmed from the 80s (even the live drums sound like they were recorded in a dead studio with heavy processing), and the bass sits high in the mix. Delay on the vocals provides the veil here to providing some masking from easy accessibility. “Head for to Country” is sheer cheese with a deadpan delivery and could be inserted seamlessly into any of your favorite 80s B-movies. But somehow Maus manages to make these cheesy retro-minded songs come alive in a fresh new way, with complete and utter seriousness. Perhaps it’s the overhanded ironic nature of it all (see Ice T referencing “Cop Killer”), or the keen attention to detail… or maybe it’s just that these are just flat out enjoyable songs. Maybe it’s the inherent weirdness that manages to break through the pop postures (see repeated proverb: “pussy is not a matter of fact”). All these songs hit on a surface level, but it’s possible to dive into each of them and marvel at the interlocking layers and textures. The baroque composition of “Breakthrough This” is just one of many indications that there is much more thought going into this than just an 80s flashback. And the sequencing of the album manages to create the feeling that each song is better than the one preceding it, ending with the uplifting anthem “Believer”. It’s as if the lyrics “keep pushing on” and “breakthrough this” alludes to the journey of the album itself. In the end John tells us that they call him the believer, but the fact is, he has turned us into believers and I’m pretty sure he knows it.