John Maus

Right now, John Maus is one of the only individuals out there making important music.  Many people are making good music, some are making intelligent music, but few are making anything truly important.  Maus is one of the exceptions.

Despite this, many critics have taken to using comparisons to other singers or sounds when describing Maus' work.  You'll probably see Ian Curtis' ghost invoked in comparison to Maus' deep bellow.  You'll also see the 1980s consistently referenced when describing his preference for electronics over rawk.  While these references aren't entirely untrue, they're far too reductive to describe what Maus is doing.

It would be hard not to notice the similarities between Maus' music and '80s synthpop forebearers, but where those acts were making simple dance-pop, Maus intentionally loses the plot and gives in to his irrational, and sometimes conflicting, emotions.  He uses his simple dance-pop as a framework for subversive, confrontational statements.  Sometimes these statements are framed as darkly humorous jokes, such as in the case of "Rights for Gays", off Maus' second album, Love is Real.

Offering no compelling argument for his statement, Maus simply intones "rights for gays, oh yeah!" repeatedly.  The song's treatment of gay rights as a joke could be controversial if not for the fact that it feels like Maus is saying, "It's ridiculous we even have to fight for this.  The scenario is itself the joke."  So, in that sense, the song functions in similar fashion to a Kafka story, highlighting the darkly humorous but ultimately maddening absurdities of human existence.

This places Maus more in line with another staple of the 1980s: hardcore punk.  While post-punk of the era had its share of radicals, the intensity with which he presents himself and his penchant for dark humor seems more akin to a band like the Dead Kennedys.  Never is this more apparent than in Maus' re-working of 1990s Ice-T vehicle Body Count's "Cop Killer".

This mixing of ideas from various genres of pop music takes Maus' music from simple dance-pop into a more complex realm where pop stars and pundits can comfortably engage each other beyond the need of co-opting the other's image to maintain relevancy.

John Maus - "Quantum Leap"
John Maus - "Tenebrae"