Muna on Rejecting the Term ‘Girl Band,’ Tori Amos’ ‘Top Energy’ and Working With Mitski
28.06.2022 - 04:45
/ variety.com
Sasha Urban editorMuna is not the band it was three years ago. Of course, the world isn’t the same, either.When Muna’s second studio album, “Saves the World,” was released in 2019, COVID wasn’t a household word, Trump was still president and, notably, Phoebe Bridgers had not yet started her own record label.
Fresh off the release of a self-titled album on Friday, the band — made up of USC alums Katie Gavin, Naomi McPherson and Josette Maskin — is re-introducing itself, with the hopes of reaching a larger audience than ever before.Muna has been popular as an underground pop act, known for its careful construction of extremely sad music with a penchant for wordplay and queer anthems, for a while now. But ever since the band was signed to Bridgers’ Saddest Factory Records last year, its messaging has gone both indie and ironically mainstream.
That mostly started with a song that dropped in September, “Silk Chiffon,” a collaboration with Bridgers that muses on the experiences of feeling high and anxious at CVS, rollerblading, and generally being gay. It’s the opening track to the new album, but it’s only a starting point for how far the band is willing to go in the deepening of its sonic and thematic language, where the inspirations include everyone from the Backstreet Boys to the Talking Heads and Shania Twain.
The trio’s new music is bigger than ever, but its contents is also more complex (and largely happier) than the band’s previous projects. Muna is embracing contradictions, like the push-and-pull of desire, relationships to gender and the central paradox of crying on the dance floor.