MUNA Muna hails from 2022 and is
a SEALED limited edition and numbered LP (500 copies) issued on Champagne Wave Vinyl. MUNA is magic. What other band could
have stamped the forsaken year of 2021 with spangles and pom-poms, could have
made you sing (and maybe even believe) that “Life’s so fun, life’s so fun,”
during what may well have been the most uneasy stretch of your life?
“SilkChiffon,” MUNA’s instant-classic cult smash, featuring the band’s new
label head Phoebe Bridgers, hit the gray skies of the pandemic’s
year-and-a-half mark like a double rainbow. Since MUNA — lead singer/songwriter
Katie Gavin, guitarist/producer Naomi McPherson, guitarist Josette Maskin —
began making music together in college, at USC, they’d always embraced pain as
a bedrock of longing, a part of growing up, and an inherent factor of
marginalized experience: the band’s members belong to queer and minority
communities, and play for these fellow-travelers above all. But sometimes, for
MUNA, after nearly a decade of friendship and a long stretch of
pandemic-induced self-reckoning, the most radical note possible is that of
bliss.
MUNA, the band’s self-titled third album, is a landmark — the forceful,
deliberate, dimensional output of a band who has nothing to prove to anyone
except themselves.The synth on “What I Want” scintillates like a Robyn
dance-floor anthem; “Anything But Me,” galloping in 12/8, gives off Shania
Twain in eighties neon; “Kind of Girl,” wit hits soaring, plaintive The Chicks
chorus, begs to be sung at max volume with your best friends. It’s marked by a
newfound creative assurance and technical ability, both in terms of McPherson
and Maskin’s arrangements and production as well as Gavin’s songwriting, which
is as propulsive as ever, but here opens up into new moments of perspective and
grace. Here, more than ever, MUNA musters their unique powers to break through
the existential muck and transport you, suddenly, into a room where everything
is possible — a place where the disco ball’s never stopped throwing sparkles on
the walls, where you can sweat and cry and lie down on the floor and make out
with whoever, where vulnerability in the presence of those who love you can
make you feel momentarily bulletproof, and self-consciousness only sharpens the
swell of joy.
1.
Silk Chiffon
2.
What I Want
3.
Runner's High
4.
Home By Now
5.
Kind of Girl
6.
Handle Me
7.
No Idea
8.
Solid
9.
Anything But Me
10.
Loose Garment
11.
Shooting Star