Send "John Maus " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Spin |
 Before he attended CalArts, before he befriended Ariel Pink and Panda Bear, John Maus grew up in Spamtown, USA. This iconoclastic one-man synth-pop band's roots in canned-meat capital Austin, Minnesota, bear consideration when approaching his deconstructed DIY new wave. From chintzy keyboards to karaoke-style performances, Maus exaggerates the stereotypically artificial to tap into something real. On his first album for Ribbon, Maus does more than stay true to his bros. Watery analog fidelity and reverb suggest chillwave, but only on the surface. With bleakly detached baritone, anxiety-ridden bass lines, and vintage electronics, Maus works more like a steampunk novelist, imagining a cityscape where the discarded technologies of the recent past shed light on the present. Or, as he puts it on "Quantum Leap": "Heart to heart, mind to mind, we are the ones who seem to travel through time." Reminiscent of obscure electroclash grand-daddy John Foxx, these retro-futurist trappings allow Maus to be scandalously, absurdly, and sometimes movingly honest. Noncover "Cop Killer" out-incites Ice-T, though its surreal coldness is more Grand Theft Auto than South Central. Stormy "Matter of Fact" describes what "pussy" isn't and "Hey Moon" waxes wryly on lonely hearts like Magnetic Fields. Between the baroque church-organ breakdowns of "...and the rain," Maus insists, "Somebody tell the truth." On transcendent finale "Believer," he sets you free....full text |
| Guardian |
| Maus's voice lies somewhere between Ian Curtis's and Brian Blessed's and his third solo record has much of the former's sense of doom, and just a bit of the latter's absurdity. His sombre baritone is offset by outrageously naff synths but, despite flourishes such as the arpeggiators on "Quantum Leap" or the suburban doorbell chimes on "Head for the Country", it all seems deadly serious. Quietly insistent melodies thread their way through, not least on the sweetly artless "Hey Moon" ("Hey moon, it's just me and you tonight"), which sounds like the sort of thing Kermit might sing with a banjo....full text |
| Pitchfork |
| John Maus first gained notice while collaborating and playing with fellow Cal Arts classmate Ariel Pink more than 10 years ago. Though both have since developed cultish followings by releasing distinctive takes on murky lo-fi, Maus has steeped his music in new wave signifiers, an association furthered by his deep, commanding voice. Whether he's evoking Joy Division's Ian Curtis or Bauhaus' Peter Murphy, Maus opts to abstract the genre, inserting noise into unexpected places and walking the line between sincerity and surreality. From the beginning, he's been an artist fascinated by the parameters, paradoxes, and possibilities of pop. Earlier this year, Maus took a walk through New York's Central Park Zoo with a journalist from Self-Titled. "I didn't realize that the music I was making was especially weird," he says in the piece. "Honestly, I thought I was making Top 40 kind of stuff. It wasn't until people kept telling me so that I realized my work was thought of as something 'other' than that." If you're at all familiar with the Minnesota native's swampy retro-futurist synth-pop, you may understand why he might place emphasis on the word "other." One experience with his body of solo work (or brave live performances) makes clear that his could be categorized as "outsider" art, but it's difficult to say that without also seriously considering why. He makes thought-provoking music that's disguised as something else. We Must Become the Pitiless Censors of Ourselves, his latest full-length, is the most vibrant and toothsome expression of Maus' pursuits yet. He keeps his vocals awash in gothic reverb and echo-driven effects, blurring the lines between what he's saying and emoting. Sometimes, as on "Cop Killer", a Jan Hammer-indebted number on which Maus sings over a chilled bed of keys, the results are outlandish and oddly funny at the same time, in the way that certain scenes in David Lynch films can leap from chilling to comically exaggerated. ("Cop killer, let's kill the cops tonight/ Cop Killer, kill every cop in sight," he sings.) And then there's "Matter of Fact" immediately thereafter, a song whose staccato, orc-like chorus line is "Pussy is not a matter of fact." They're not the kind of earworms you want to find yourself singing aloud in public, but it might happen anyway....full text |
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