I watched on as lead-singer Katie Gavin slipped in between band members as she sang about dancing in the middle of a gay-bar, all whilst simultaneously decked-out in a full latex outfit and displaying a level of campy pop stardom only she could surely pull off. Then, two days later, I crammed into a snug, underground club to see them on their last UK-headline tour date that summer. The circumstances of the two performances couldn’t have been more different, and yet they had proved their ability to once again seize a venue of any size with such magnetic intensity, transforming it into a boundless dance-floor – whether that was for an intimate audience of a few hundred, or tens of thousands just a few nights before.
On their new album, MUNA proves that this dancefloor is still alive and well, its pulse carrying on long after the night is over and into the hours of the early morning. Where 2022’s MUNA felt made for moments alone in your room, Dancing is an ultimate guide to going out. Immediately the opener "It Gets So Hot" transports the listener to Saturday night in downtown LA, where the air inside of the bar is cooler than out on the street. “The sweat drips off her down on the concrete” Gavin sings robotically whilst the beat is there to keep you steady, pulsing like club lights in time with the bass. The song then snaps out of this trance as the manufactured beat overheats and breaks down, pushing the song into an all-new abstract place before the power goes out altogether.
This becomes a common thread throughout the record, as its
production will at times aspire to veer into more adventurous territory,
echoing the deconstructed, grungier edges of their debut About U
(2017). Gavin’s looped voice decays into shimmering ambient piano on "So What" as a loudspeaker within an arrangement of flowers is
triumphantly set alight in its music video. And then there’s "Wannabeher", a sleazy electro-rock cut that encapsulates the very real,
very queer feeling of being completely besotted with someone – unsure
whether you want to be with them or be them. Reimagining
Bikini Kill’s "Rebel Girl" for a rowdy contemporary stage, Gavin
sketches her hedonism with striking clarity, hoping “she’ll rub off on
me when I kiss her.”
On the other side of sapphic desire, however, is knowing
when to leave love behind, as the record’s second half gives way to
Gavin’s reconciling between what she wants and what she needs. This is
where you’ll find Dancing’s most (ironically) straight-leaning
pop, on tracks like "Mary Jane" and "Girl’s Girl" – polished and
produced to perfection by the band’s own Naomi McPherson, and dense with
quips towards an ex that conceal true underlying heartbreak. Though the
Janet Jackson-esque percussive slap bass and chanting choruses are hard
to resist, these moments can also leave you wondering where Gavin’s
knack for raw, conversational songwriting has got to in all of this.
We finally get a good glimpse on the album’s closer. "Buzzkiller" reckons with the cost of queer desire and the labels of
success amidst a fractured political landscape. In contrast to the
album’s other jam-packed compositions, this one creates a space deep
enough for Gavin’s words to sit and float alongside the music,
compelling her to confront a wider world of devastation beyond her own
heartbreaks. She attends a protest and is suddenly filled by a sense of
community and urgency, before lamenting “but then I came home and I
still feel hopeless / I’ve got that feeling again.” It’s a feeling that
seems to permeate most of our days: that we must go on and live our
lives whilst others continue to try and stamp out our very existence.
It’s a deeply resonant closing message, and MUNA proves that pop can be a worthy place to do it. Instead, Dancing poses that perhaps the only thing to do in the face of losing faith is to step back into the heart of Saturday night, to a dancefloor somewhere in West Hollywood,
alight and full of people, all united in defiance and searching for that
same release.
