FEATURE: Spotlight: MUNA — Music Musings & Such

FEATURE:

Spotlight

MUNA

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A group I have featured before…

but not put them in my Spotlight feature, MUNA are an act that everyone should know about and get behind. The Los Angeles band consists of Katie Gavin, Josette Maskin and Naomi McPherson. They have released two incredible studio albums with RCA Records, About U (2017) and Saves the World (2019). They are now signed to Phoebe Bridgers’ independent label, Saddest Factory Records. The MUNA album is due for release on 24th June, 2022. That album is going to be one of the best and most important of this year. MUNA are going to go stratospheric very soon. It is the perfect time to feature them here. To properly salute them, there are a few interviews that I want to bring in. I will end with some information about their upcoming eponymous studio album. I am going to start with a DIY interview from last year. Given the fact the pandemic was in full flight last year, it was a pretty unsure time for a group who have such incredible and must-hear music in their locker:

“As for many artists - and the general population - 2021 has been a rollercoaster for the LA trio. While the majority of the pandemic was incredibly tough for the band (“Yeah, there have been many days where we have just cried,” guitarist Josette Maskin says, “and many days where we were like, ‘I don’t know if we can keep going’, but we managed to”), this year also marked the start of a new chapter for them: they became the second artists to sign to Phoebe’s new label, Saddest Factory Records.

“I think that it just worked out in terms of timing in a way that felt like it was very meant to be,” explains Katie of how the relationship came to fruition. “In the pandemic, we got dropped by our last label - we were signed to a major - and we were having that important time where we were like, ‘What are we? Why do we do this? Why do we wanna keep going?’ At the same time, [Phoebe] made it clear that she wanted to work with us and it just made a lot of sense for a lot of different reasons. We respect her a lot and thought it would be cool to have her be our boss, so we signed and it’s been pretty fucking great so far!”

“I think the other thing that we find really affirming is to work with someone who is also of a marginalised gender,” adds Josette, of working with not just a peer but someone of the LGBTQ+ community. “I think that makes this experience really validating. To have someone that understands us in that way and isn’t going to pressure us in any way; we just feel very understood and supported and we couldn’t really be happier.”

For their first foray with Saddest Factory, the band have just released effervescent pop gem ‘Silk Chiffon’: “a song,” as guitarist Naomi McPherson describes it, “for kids to have their first gay kiss to.” “I think this is the first time we’ve put out a song where I didn’t feel very worried!” Josette laughs.

An addictive, bubblegum offering that celebrates the queer experience and those heady early days of a crush, it’s little wonder the track’s already been met with so much love. “There was just a moment of levity after finishing ‘Saves The World’ because that record was super heavy,” Katie offers up. “I got to work through a lot of stuff with that record.”

After completing that 2019 second album, a fresh burst of creativity soon followed, and the first steps of ‘Silk Chiffon’ were made. “I came back from a concert and the pre-chorus was the first thing I wrote; I just thought it was really funny, kinda like writing ‘Number One Fan’,” recalls Katie. “It feels like a joy that’s not necessarily hard-earned, but it definitely feels like a new choice to just be at a point in life where I’m choosing to have fun and experience some levity and have that queer joy represented in music. You know, ‘That girl thinks I’m cute, yeeeeah!’”

As for their next move, the trio are still keeping things a little vague (“We’re not ready to reveal all of our cards yet,” nods Naomi), but the sense of joy from their recent single is set to find its way in. “There was a point when we were working on this next project, where I was a little worried because people know us and love us - to a certain extent - for the pain that we put into pop music,” Katie laughs. “I was like, ‘Is it too joyful?!’

“There’s stuff on this next record that’s in that realm of experiencing love and experiencing joy, and also just being comfortable with your own desires, whether that’s in a relationship, or a desire for freedom,” she continues. “But we’re also doing the very typical MUNA thing… It’s not a bunch of songs that sound the same, it’s a lot of different styles because that’s what’s fun for us”.

A sensation and close trio that you have to respect and admire, I would not be shocked to see them headlining huge festivals in the next few years. Under a great label, they are going to have the freedom, leadership and resources that can take their music to new heights. This i-D interview reveals that the sensational MUNA almost called it quits fairly recently:

“There was a moment, in the long timeline of MUNA’s influential lifespan, when the Californian band toyed with the idea of giving up. It came more recently than you might think, in a strange moment of silence, mid-pandemic. At the start of 2020, the group had formally wrapped work on their second record Saves The World, a major critical success. Like their 2017 debut About U, it had spawned songs that captured the miraculous, morose and mentally ill experience of what it means to be queer today. They were, at that time, like a lifeline for their listeners.

As the music industry waded through the pandemic, and pursestrings tightened, the call came from their then-label RCA Records (home to Britney Spears, Brockhampton and Doja Cat) in early 2021, delivering a harsh blow: they’d been dropped, rendered homeless release-wise, and were left with the early parts of a third album that may, in theory, have never seen the light of day.

PHOTO CREDIT: Jheyda McGarrell

They’re up front about how they reacted to it. “Hell yeah we wanted to quit, baby!” the band’s guitarist-slash-producer Josette Maskin says. The three band members are speaking over Zoom on a Wednesday morning, “shredded” by a full-on stint at SXSW the week prior.

Katie Gavin, the band’s lead singer and songwriter, is reflecting upon how they got here. “We were just babies, you know?” she says, looking back to MUNA’s early days, as a band whose ability to crystallise the beauty of queer pain and euphoria into perfect pop music earned them respect in spaces they hadn’t expected. “It can take people — particularly queer people — a long time to figure out what works for them and how they want to represent themselves, especially when you’re in a situation where there’s a lot of voices coming from other directions. People try to fit you into something that is the closest approximation to what your identity is. ”

“Or the closest approximation of what a consumable version of your identity is at that point in time,” Naomi McPherson, self-professed “mixed black genius dyke” and the group’s guitarist-slash-producer says. This isn’t a read of their old label; they understand that machine fully and recognise both their position as outliers within it, and those that supported them through it all. What they learned there, working briefly with Grammy-winning producers and touring with fellow Sony signees, like Harry Styles, were valuable parts of their narrative. What they released was still as magical as the early material that had been made in their college bedrooms pre-signing: heartbreak songs written under their desks (“If U Love Me Now”); massive ‘fuck you’ anthems mastered during their college finals (“Loudspeaker”).

They’ve spent the past year readjusting to life on an indie label — Phoebe Bridgers’ Saddest Factory Records — where the opportunity to return to their roots meant they could make an album how they wanted to. No MOs, no label-led masterplans, no interventions — just pure, unbridled MUNA.

When we talk, they’re still in the “zooming out” period of the record. It was finished in December 2021, after a furious few months spent in the basement studio of Josette’s place, working like they did before fame and fans found them. “I’ve been joking with friends that I don't really know what we made!” Katie says, knowing only that what they’ve made makes them feel intensely vulnerable. “We’ll know more when we have a bit more space from it.”

If the sound-bite understanding of what MUNA’s self-titled third album means to them is still forming, they do appear to have a grasp on what it sounds and feels like on a macro scale. “We joke about [this album] having dyke boyband energy,” Katie says, admitting it’s their most pop endeavour to date, like their major label detachment has made them lean into the sounds most associated with that set up. “There’s something fun about playing into that while we have the freedom of an indie label. It’s a more indie record than Saves the World, in the sense that we really did it on our own with our friends. There’s nobody telling us what to do now.”

PHOTO CREDIT: Jheyda McGarrell

There is an unhinged energy to MUNA’s forthcoming record: restless, massive and undeterred. To pin down its sonic hallmarks is an impossible task, because it’s encyclopaedic: sing-a-long stadium pop segues into floor-filling dance into ruminative Shania Twain-esque country into songs with “90s songwriter chilled makeout” energy. “Part of the process of making the record sonically was having bold moments and making brash contradictions,” Naomi says. “There are songs that lyrically contradict the song before it. I think we were throwing everything at the wall.”

Josette recalls a question they asked themselves a lot in the studio: “What is a song supposed to sound like?” they recall. “That’s what our decisions are based on. That’s been the guiding principle of MUNA.” And in many ways, it makes perfect sense. Katie’s songwriting (she is “very easily one of the best that is alive doing it currently”, Naomi says), and the way it meets the production of her bandmates, feels primal and intuitive, which is perhaps why — despite those sprawling inspirations — pop feels like the most natural label for what they make.

Katie starts crying down the phone line; it’s early, she’s emotional. “I just think that the songs that somebody listens to can change their lives,” she says. “I just wanna help people if they wanna make better choices, but I also wanna help the girlies that just wanna have fun!”.

Busy with a tour of North America this year, let’s hope MUNA have chance to tour Europe soon enough (they did play in the U.K. recently). I am going to end with a link to where you can buy the MUNA album. Before that, there is an interview from Rolling Stone that once more reiterates how MUNA have overcome obstacles and doubts and stood strong and focused. They have been together since 2013 - so the fact they remain together and have this determination and togetherness is awesome to see:

“Muna was stuck. In 2019, the band — lead songwriter and vocalist Katie Gavin, 29, and multi-instrumentalists and producers Naomi McPherson, 29, and Josette Maskin, 28 — was at a rare co-writing session with their new friend Mitski, who was helping them refine an unfinished tune called “No Idea.”

At the time, it consisted only of a verse, a chorus, and a vague, half-joking concept: “It was going to be our dyke boy-band song,” says Gavin, with her (and the band’s) trademark wit.

Mitski liked the idea, encouraging the trio to home in on Y2K-era Max Martin keyboard sounds and helping them write a second verse, but “No Idea” was still far from complete. Muna cycled through different iterations of the song: disco, funk, electronic. They obsessed over the bass sound, which felt “trapped in a certain groove,” in McPherson’s words.

Eventually, with the help of a few select reference points (LCD Soundsystem’s “Oh Baby,” Charlotte Gainesbourg’s “Deadly Valentine”) and a new, arpeggiated synth riff, Muna arrived at a finished product for “No Idea,” which sounds like a cross between vintage Daft Punk and the Backstreet Boys circa “Larger Than Life,” with a dash of the Ghostbusters theme song — and not quite like anything Muna have released before.

“No Idea” is just a small slice of the freewheeling experimentation and deliberate genre-hopping on Muna, the band’s forthcoming third album, due June 24. The record features a more pronounced and polished display of the mix of textured dance music, moody synth-rock, Janet Jackson-inspired pop-R&B and Shania Twain-indebted anthemic country that the band explored on 2019’s Saves the World. “The sound of this record explodes in a ton of different directions,” Gavin says.

Nearly a decade after forming in 2013, Muna is rapidly shifting from their long-running status as relatively unknown “Los Angeles musicians’ favorite musicians” to a crossover pop phenomenon in their own right. Over the past several years, the band has opened for Harry Styles, appeared on Taylor Swift’s playlists, and earned fans like Tegan and Sara and Demi Lovato.

That rise kicked into overdrive last year, when the band followed its 2020 one-off dance single “Bodies” — which quickly became their second-most played song on Spotify — by signing with Phoebe Bridgers’ indie imprint and releasing “Silk Chiffon,” the even catchier song that kicks off Muna. Due in part to its Bridgers feature, the latter single exposed Muna to entirely new fanbases, giving them their first ever alternative radio hit.

The trio recently wrapped up an arena tour opening up for Kacey Musgraves, where they were received with an enthusiasm and energy typically reserved for headliners. “Half the place was singing along to ‘Silk Chiffon,’” says Musgraves songwriter Ian Fitchuk, who helped craft the Muna single’s chorus with songwriting partner Daniel Tashian. “I was like, ‘How did this happen?’”

Muna have plenty to say about how it all happened: about how their production chops and songwriting prowess has been slowly improving with each album; about how getting dropped from a major-label deal with RCA in 2020 forced a necessary existential reflection; about how briefly shedding their “sad sack” reputation for a pop-sugar rush like “Silk Chiffon” has changed their lives.

When Gavin first brought the rough sketch of “Silk Chiffon” to Fitchuck and Tashian in Nashville in early 2020, she had written the song’s pre-chorus and verses, but wasn’t sure where to go from there.

“She started singing ‘Life’s so fun,’ and I’m thinking, ‘What an odd thing, to sing about rollerskates,’” says Fitchuk, who did not, at that point, know that Gavin is, indeed, an avid roller skater.

When Tashian suggested that the song’s chorus could start by shouting the word “Silk!” followed by a pause, Gavin was thrown at first.

“So I just leaned into it, and that seems to be the case for a lot of the record — we just leaned…” Gavin says, before interrupting herself. “Oh wait, I actually don’t want to use that phrase. ‘Leaning in’ is a girl boss phrase.”

“Yahoo CEO vibes,” says McPherson.

“I’m here for the Muna Inc. era,” says Maskin.

“That should have been the name of the album,” says Gavin.

The origin story of Muna, who met at USC, has been told enough times that Maskin can summarize it in one sentence. “Katie saw me from across the room, said ‘Gay,’ and then we started to play music together,” says Maskin, who grew up in L.A. playing in a series of early bands (Grape Ape, Blue Thunder) before eventually forming a group with Gavin called Cuddleslut.

That band never released any music and performed just one show, at which Maskin wasn’t actually present — she’d fled to attend Coachella, and was replaced by their mutual friend McPherson, who grew up in a family of jazz musicians and spent most of their adolescence resisting the urge to make a life out of music. “You deny the call as much as you can,” says McPherson. “But at a certain point, you realize that the thing you’re best at is maybe the best you should do.”

By the time Cuddleslut played its one and only show, Gavin had already lived out a short-lived solo musical career of her own. After growing up in the Chicago suburbs, she experienced a small rush of fame when, at 17, her 2010 cover of Willow Smith’s “Whip My Hair” went viral on YouTube.

Today, Gavin reflects on that period with a mix of grace and gratitude for the lessons it taught her. “‘Whip My Hair’ was my first experience of having a reckoning with my white privilege, because a couple people called me in about the politics of a white girl with long brown hair doing a cover of a song that Willow Smith made as a child to celebrate Black women’s hair, ” she says. “I had been writing songs for a long time and had wanted a platform, but it was this moment of realizing, ‘Oh, I don’t actually know shit about shit”.

You need to go and pre-order MUNA, because it is going to be one of the albums of this year. A brilliant live act and studio band, the future looks bright and filled with success and new opportunities. Their third album looks like it will be a cannot-miss release:

“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? “Silk Chiffon,” 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,” with its 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”.

Go and follow MUNA and enjoy the joys and depths of their extraordinary music. Even though they have been together a fair while, I think the singing to Saddest Factory Record will bring them to a larger audience. The music they are making now is their absolute best, though you know they can go even further! You do not want to miss out on MUNA, as they are, in every possible way, such a…