John Maus:We Must Become the Pitiless Censors of Ourselves

9.0/10.0

“We Must Become the Pitiless Censors of Ourselves”, the new album by John Maus, is one of those albums where every song sounds like a radio hit from another universe, with completely different lighting and lifestyles than our own. For quotational purposes, the aforementioned description can be applied to the artist in general. There’s an aural aspect to John Maus that summons phantomatic remnants of no wave, late disco, and choral music. The result of these faint aspects being strung together with the hollowed-out appeal of present-day synth-pop is jarring, but also soothing and profound at times. Overall, this new album offers a more put together Maus. “Pitiless Censors” has a focus, feeling more fine-tuned than previous albums.  From the pulsating cosmos of “Believer” (which has a colorful, video-decayed music video that perfectly encapsulates the Maus aesthetic, found below) to the stark howls of “Cop Killer”, Maus’s new work is structured with a backbone of beats dressed with delicate, chiming melodies that  range from charming to darkly hymnal. Things nearly slow to a standstill on “Hey Moon,” but it’s a meditative gesture, featuring Maus’s signature deep, reverbed mutterings paired with a female voice. It could go horribly wrong, be disastrously saccharine, but somehow Maus pulls it off: oftentimes, his music punts accusations of kitsch out of the field with the emotive sincerity of a truly talented avant-gardist. Maus is able to flawlessly corrupt the decadent without the smell of rotting irony interfering. There’s a perversion of the religious present in some of Maus’s songs, such as on “Head for the Country,” which features echoing bells (in my mind rung by some mournful, eyeliner-sporting Quasimodo) cast with some truly funky synth kicks. It’s true that at times Maus’s new work sounds somewhat familiar to his previous songs, but I still laud Maus’s ability to keep the waves of his songs burnt to a crisp. Not to mention that Maus is capable of keeping it fast, with head-bobbing tracks like “The Crucifix”. On “Quantum Leap,” one can imagine riding through glittering galaxies on the back of one of those skeletal plastic deer yard ornaments while wearing a soutane and weeping rainbow.

                Despite the showmanship, there’s haze here. There’s mist; there’s an aspect of dissembling, like Maus’s words have crawled through a dense fog to reach your ears and have arrived bent out of shape. That being said, I think the cover art for this album is very apropos: a lighthouse’s beam cutting through the night sky, towards the endless dark of some anonymous ocean. In a way, Maus’s music is this hopeful trajectory, seeking to simultaneously illuminate and overexpose. Fans of Gary War and even Xiu Xiu will completely devour this off-color, sour candy. As for my hopes for Maus in the future, all I can say is that I hope he never stops shimmering.

-Blank White