Screen Memories
Broadly cut from the synth pop cloth, Maus has fashioned the frosty minimalism of its fabric into a cloak of infinite meaning, genuine grace and absurdist humor over the course of three defining albums since 2006. His fourth album Screen Memories, follows six years after 2011’s We Must Become The Pitiless Censors Of Ourselves, which appeared like a thunderbolt of maniacal energy and turned everyone’s heads. Screen Memories was written, recorded, and engineered by Maus over the last few years in his home in Minnesota. It’s a solitary place situated in the sub-zero winter temperatures creep into the songs as do the buzzing wasps of summer.
The latest collection from synth-pop retrofuturist and punk intellectual John Maus contains grander, darker songs than his previous albums. It’s a thrill to encounter his singular voice.
Julien Baker’s crushingly intimate songs get more breathing room on Turn Out The Lights, Weezer feels caught in an endless summer, and John Maus’ hypnotic Screen Memories is either genius or a joke. These plus Ty Dolla Sign in the week’s notable releases.
Maus is in his element when creating music quite unlike anything else.
Screen Memories is a triumph of low-key retro-futurism, an album that is proudly out of step with the current state of pop music and all the better for it.
John Maus is a musician of curiosities and contradictions. He holds a PhD in political philosophy, but (controversially) appeared as a guest...
If the test of time is the only true measure of an album's worth then John Maus's We Must Become the Pitiless Censors of Ourselves is close to being a classic.
Six years on from being catapulted out of underground obscurity with ‘We Must Become the Pitiless Censors of Ourselves’, John Maus has
Since his last album in 2011 John Maus went and did a PhD - his new one 'Screen Memories' is a study in unity and harmony.
'Screen Memories' by John Maus: Our review of 'Screen Memories' finds John Maus moody if a little repetitive.
Screen Memories meditates on the possibility that runaway technology will soon account for the human error altogether.