MUNA - Dancing On The Wall

2022's self-titled album landed MUNA in a position most bands spend forever trying and failing to manufacture. 'Silk Chiffon' was the Trojan horse, the Band Of The Year lists were the paperwork. Whatever fourth album the LA trio were going to deliver was always going to arrive with a verdict half-written by their own back catalogue. The unusual thing about 'Dancing On The Wall' is that the verdict it earns is even more flattering than the glowing one already drafted.

Alt-pop runs on dog years, which makes four of them an epoch Katie Gavin made a brilliant solo record in the gap, but the world around them continued to shift too. They came back to a world that has stopped being able to pretend its summers are normal, and a political moment that can no longer wait for mainstream culture to catch up. The album that arrives today is the record those intervening years forged.

'It Gets So Hot' opens with a title that doubles as a thesis statement; the heat is erotic and apocalyptic in equal measure, and the song refuses to choose between them. Gavin's voice arrives a little ragged, past pretending. Whatever escapism MUNA were once accused of trafficking in is gone; Gavin has said as much, telling Dork recently that "we're not super into the idea of our band being escapist". Though the dancefloor stays, it has all its old meanings and several new ones laid on top.

Title track 'Dancing On The Wall' delivers with the kind of perfect realisation MUNA have always been good at, but the surrounding texture has been roughed up. The guitars have more friction than the band's earlier records; the rhythm section drives hard without chasing. It’s recognisably the same band that wrote ‘I Know A Place’ and 'Silk Chiffon', but it’s also one that's decided it’s time to sound a little less polished and a lot more present.

Then there is 'Big Stick'. The band have called it their most overtly political song, dropping it ahead of the album as a 48-hour Bandcamp fundraiser for Pal Humanity, the Gaza mutual-aid project. The line about America giving weapons to dictators in apartheid states, and giving kids in Palestine PTSD, is the moment the record's political dread becomes specific. It’s also the song that organises the rest around it. Every track on either side of it feels weightier afterwards, because this one has put the price of ignoring our reality in the name of sweet release on the table.

The record's spine - its sequencing, its tonal control, the way one mood pivots into the next without losing its grip - is unmistakably MUNA. It’s an album that knows MUNA's previous best well enough to refuse to revisit them, and trusts the songs to find the new ones on the way through.

Four years on from a record that deservedly made them the band of their moment, MUNA have done the rarer thing. Where most bands either retreat or overreach, 'Dancing On The Wall' refuses the choice. Funny and frightened, in the club and on the streets, with queer joy and political fire in the same breath. If MUNA had a peak, they have just moved it upwards.