For the past few years, John Maus has been toiling over his fourth album, Screen Memories, in his rural Minnesota hometown. Inspired by civilization’s quickening march toward the apocalypse, it’s a record of monolithic sounds and anxiety-laced lyrics (it even ends with a song titled “Bombs Away”).
Like his longtime collaborator Ariel Pink, Maus makes experimental pop with drum machines and synthesizers, and he actually built from scratch the synthesizers he plays on Screen Memories (though I’ll admit my ears can’t tell the difference). It’s ironic that he desired such total control while making music about the apocalypse, the absolute end of humanity’s control. But the fact that he successfully built his own machines is unsurprising—Maus has a PhD in political philosophy, and approaches pop music with the same intellectualism. Reading interviews with him honestly gives me headaches; he has complex explanations for the mechanics behind each song, and I just don’t care.
I do, however, love his records: His last, 2012’s A Collection of Rarities and Previously Unreleased Material, contains the beloved “Bennington,” and 2011’s We Must Become the Pitiless Censors of Ourselves includes his cover of Molly Nilsson’s “Hey Moon” along with the anti-authoritarian anthem “Cop Killer.”
But his 2006 debut, Songs, is still my favorite Maus album. It’s lo-fi baroque-pop with darkly funny lyrics, some of which are completely perverted (topics include sex with Ringo Starr and grandma pee). And a few songs reflect the human experience with intense tenderness and honesty: “Through the Skies for You” sounds like hang gliding through the heaven that is falling in love, and “Just Wait Til Next Year” captures the emotional brutality of having a crush, with its endlessly spiraling faux-harpsichord melody and obsessive, frustrated lyrics (like “I’d cut off all my fingers just to touch you” and “I long for you, I long for you, I hate you”).
Maus is known for his sweaty, chaotic solo performances, but he’s currently touring with a full band for the first time ever. If Screen Memories is an album about the end, his show will likely be a frantic wave goodbye.