John Maus
Button Factory, Dublin
★★★★☆
John Maus’s concert at Button Factory in Dublin on Saturday is an extraordinary display of musical eccentricity from a singer who has become one of the great pop oddballs of the era. In front of a sell-out crowd, he cavorts like a Jazzercise instructor having a public breakdown while singing in a monkish baritone that seems to be emerging from the depths of a coal bunker.
Maus’s blend of apocalyptic electropop – think a mega-lo-fi Gary Numan – and spasmodic break dancing is great fun once you get used to the sheer oddness. The 45-year-old former philosophy lecturer from Minnesota cuts a bizarre figure from the moment he emerges in a haze of dry ice and starts slamming like a human jackhammer. It’s half performance art, half exhibitionist freakout, and it immediately punches a hole in the invisible wall between audience and performer.
An air of celebration infuses the concert as he kicks off with the New Order-go-mumblecore onslaught of My Whole World’s Coming Apart. Flying into Dublin at the tail end of a lengthy European tour, Maus comes across as genuinely delighted to be here. He may be relieved to still have a career, having flirted with cancellation after it emerged that he had been in Washington, DC, on the day of the January 6th riots in 2021.
Was Maus gaga for Maga? He later clarified that he had been in the city for a film project, but for a heartbeat it looked as if he was about to be exorcised from the music business (a fate that indeed befell his companion in Washington, Ariel Pink, another Button Factory headliner). That did not come to pass, and what a joy it is to see him bring his 100-watt eccentricity to Ireland.
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What is extraordinary, moreover, is how much mileage he extracts from such a limited formula. Every song is a variation on the same tinny electropop theme – and each is accompanied by manic dad dancing from Maus, whose floppy bowl cut is seemingly inspired by that of Javier Bardem’s vengeful hitman from No Country for Old Men. At one point he even starts running laps of the stage, as if trying to hit his daily step count.
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Yet there is more to his music than magnificent moshing. He might jump like a demented muppet on Because We Built It, but the lyrics are about the unravelling of western institutions and the end of the rule of law. Similarly, I Hate Antichrist is a warning about false prophets who tell gullible voters that they have all the answers – an issue in the United States, obviously, but perhaps in Ireland, too.
Framed by hellish red lighting, the dancing makes him look like the lunatic at a rave, but Maus has explained that his performance style is a very conscious effort to connect with the audience. Too many concerts today are, he believes, slick and rehearsed to death. With Maus there’s an exciting sense that things could go off the rails.
The one departure comes as he starts the encore with Adorabo, a choral piece inspired by Gregorian chant, which he became fascinated with growing up Catholic in the American Midwest. Then it’s back to peak pogoing as he bounds around to Believer, a straw-haired elf who has jumped off the shelf and looks as if he could gyrate on the spot all the way to Christmas and beyond.
