MUNA Make It Too Hot To Think Straight

MUNA are certainly no strangers to extreme heat. The Los Angeles-based trio – made up of Katie Gavin, Josette Maskin and Naomi McPherson – travel the world playing to festival crowds in peak summer temperatures and deal in SoCal sun on a daily basis. Their latest album, Dancing on the Wall, opens with ‘It Gets So Hot’, a slow-burn dance track about, well, being hot.

“It gets so hot I can’t think straight,” vocalist Gavin sings above thumping synths, speaking directly to the souls of everyone packed into Heaven on Wednesday night. It was the second of the band’s three album-release shows in London, taking place just a day after temperatures reached a scorching 34°C across much of the UK.

While Heaven does appear equipped with some form of air conditioning, it’s not enough to stop the heat from rising the second MUNA take the stage and the crowd starts jumping. But that’s exactly the climate the band intended to create. When conceptualising the record, the trio actively leaned into a “hot and sweaty” visual aesthetic. It’s all part of the programme.

The album, which dropped on 8 May, marks the band’s second outing signed to Phoebe Bridgers’ Saddest Factory Records. Dancing on the Wall finds MUNA in a very different position than when they released their self-titled LP in 2022 – a record that arrived during the aftershocks of the pandemic, not long after the group were dropped by RCA. On that self-titled project, MUNA re-introduced themselves as a self-professed ‘queer joy mini-skirt rollerblade’ band.

Four years later, Dancing on the Wall sees them continuing their exploration of love and community with a more jagged edge. The record, produced by McPherson, conjures pioneering punk and riot grrrl acts like Kathleen Hanna’s Le Tigre and Bikini Kill, along with the ’80s and ’90s pop influences of Madonna, Prince, and Tears for Fears. Yet, from this fresh vantage point, MUNA remain anchored by what they do best: writing songs designed to pull people together on the dance floor.

After breezing through ‘On Call’ – a mid-tempo track chronicling deep, unrequited availability – Gavin reflects on the previous night’s opening show. When she asks if anyone in the room was there for it, a surprising number of people yell back. “Last night was probably one of the top three hottest shows we’ve ever played,” she says. “Not even top three hottest shows, but like, top two hottest locations,” McPherson quips, drawing a laugh.

It’s difficult to imagine being fully present in what is functionally a concrete sauna, and MUNA take a moment to thank the repeat attendees accordingly. Before diving into the next track, McPherson leans into the mic and points to the back of the room, where the crowd disappears beneath the venue’s low balcony: “Shoutout to the back of the room. We fuckin’ see y’all.”

Heat permeates the album’s lyrics. ‘On Call’ sees the band yearning to be the first point of contact should its subject metaphorically set themselves on fire and require assistance. Meanwhile, ‘Mary Jane’ – which is either about a cheating partner or the pitfalls of dating someone with a weed addiction, depending on which Reddit thread you read – finds Gavin confessing that she would’ve “made a home to go up in flames” despite her lover’s promiscuity.

Thematics aside, if there’s one thing MUNA excel at, it’s building a bridge. The art of the middle-eight seems to be disappearing as algorithmic songwriting continues to encourage shorter track lengths. Many artists opt to skip the transition altogether, jumping straight from the second chorus to a final hook or dance break. MUNA refuse to yield, doubling down with euphoric bridges on ‘Eastside Girls’ and the album’s title track.

For the former, lyrics flash onto the screen behind the band, encouraging a singalong. Most of the room doesn’t need the help, shouting the words back with verve. The crowd gets especially deafening halfway through the chorus, when Gavin chants: “Fuck, she’s non-monogamous.”

The room gets loud again when the bridge to ‘Big Stick’ comes around. ‘Big Stick’ is easily the most overtly political song the band have put out to date, as noted by the members themselves when they released it on Bandcamp ahead of the album’s release as a fundraiser for Pal Humanity, a global initiative dedicated to supporting the people of North Gaza.

The song takes aim at the machinations of late-stage capitalism, and how it leads to unknowingly or knowingly consenting to violence, Gavin explained upon release. At Heaven, the crowd reaches its highest decibel when joining her on the bridge lyric, “We give kids in Palestine PTSD, but we’ll never fucking ever give them something to eat.”

Visually, the band spend a great deal of the show in relative obscurity, the lighting design making them appear as backlit silhouettes during a handful of songs, including ‘It Gets So Hot’ and ‘Why Do I Get A Good Feeling’, which ends with a surprise violin solo from Gavin.

But during the brightest songs, all three members are fully visible, with Gavin and Maskin taking frequent trips downstage for dance breaks and searing guitar solos. Gavin death-drops during ‘It Gets So Hot’, and Maskin rips too many solos to count, ending one flat on the floor. Gavin and McPherson quip about Maskin’s ambition in wearing leather pants. “I’m going to need to be airlifted out of these,” Maskin jokes.

To note the band’s outfits, Gavin sports a vampy black dress with hook-and-eye detailing, while Maskin braves the heat in leather pants and a red tank top, matching the album’s promotional colour palette. McPherson looks like they’re going to a different function, clad in a relaxed button-down and wide-leg trousers.

Towards the end of ‘So What’, Gavin takes a seat downstage, enveloped by a bright white spotlight. ‘So What’, the album’s second single, takes aim at the empty validation provided by the glamorous facets of a pop-star lifestyle, while still yearning for real connection when the party’s over. Gavin’s face remains stony as the band erupt behind her, crescendoing into a wall of sound that just about shakes Heaven’s hundred-year-old arches. All the while, Gavin stays still, as if to say, ‘anything could be happening around me right now, but I still feel empty’.

The way Gavin delivers the lyrics of ‘So What’ gives the impression that it was written about fresh pain – the band have noted in interviews that the song was inspired by situations they now find themselves in at this more lucrative stage in their career, so odds are it probably was.

After ‘Buzzkiller’, the album’s downbeat closer, the band disappear only briefly before returning to pull from their back catalogue. They play through their best material from their first three records, from the devastating ‘Stayaway’ to the nonchalant ‘Anything But Me’.

The encore feels like a gift to the room full of dedicated fans who, in Gavin’s words, braved the Ticketmaster war to be there. “Life is really fucking hard right now, but at least we’re living it together and we have each other to lean on,” she muses before the band close out the show with ‘Silk Chiffon’.

The trio will be back in London in November, playing the Eventim Apollo as part of their It Gets So Hot tour. Unpredictable weather events aside, let’s hope that when they do return, their performance is the only thing bringing the heat.