RITA DI SANTO points out the social experience of exploitation and oppression that inform the popular winners at this year’s festival
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Maus problem
WILL STONE is frustrated by a performance that chooses to garble the lyrics and drown the songs in reverb
John Maus plas Kentish Town Forum [Pic: Will Stone]
PETER MASON is tickled by a new book and exhibition that mine the rotten anachronism of the monarchy for laughs
A Nazi zeppelin whodunnit, death amidst detoxification, a twistaholic’s delight, and noir fiction for criminals
STEVE JOHNSON salutes the mellifluous tones and clear-minded political message of a uniquely relevant Birmingham-born singer-songwriter
STEVE ANDREW enjoys an account of the many communities that flourished independently of and in resistance to the empires of old
TOM STONE urges you to catch the last dates of a New York singer/songwriter, never afraid to challenge her audiences musically or politically
JAN WOOLF examines work that aims to give viewers a material experience of the environments in the polar north and Britain equally affected by the climate crisis
John Maus
Kentish Town Forum, London
⭑⭑☆☆☆
TURNING the man-behind-a-laptop idea on its head, John Maus performs in front of corrugated iron sheets arranged and hung around the stage, onto which are projected images of his anguished face.
His laptop sits on the floor facing the audience, attached to a tangle of wires and flanked by several large bottles of water.
“Gimme, gimmie, gimmie some love,” he sings while doing star jumps on the spot and some of the most aggressive head-banging you’ve seen since wrestling’s Ultimate Warrior. But this opening tune, My Whole World’s Falling Apart, among his best, sounds garbled and lost behind a wall of reverb.
Maus is a one-of-a-kind producer, using his flair for synth-songwriting to create a unique, haunting sound that has seen him incorporate Medieval and Renaissance church modes overlaid with his booming baritone. His lyrics are frequently political — such as on Rights for Gays, which he performs tonight while running laps of the stage, his bottles of water diminishing fast — and occasionally silly (I Hate Antichrist).
Yet the intricacies of his distinctive sound and production are largely drowned out, while Maus’s irreverent commitment to catharsis sees him occasionally interrupt the flow of a tune to unleash intermittent screams with an upraised fist. For someone who hasn’t released a bad album, and whose latest — Later Than You Think — marks a brilliant return after seven years, the performance is all the more frustrating to watch.
Two standouts from the new record, Disappears and Came & Got, suffer a similar fate live. But mercifully, there are moments when it works: the bouncy Bennington, with synths straight out of an ’80s sci-fi film, fires everyone up, while Do Your Best finally slows things down a notch.
An encore that includes a mangled version of Believer, its anthemic brilliance once again buried beneath reverb, and omits his lauded cover of Swedish singer-songwriter Molly Nilsson’s Hey Moon, leaves the audience wanting.
Some music just doesn’t translate that well live.
John Maus will play Oran Mor, Glasgow on December 9. Tickets: johnmaustour.co.
