Review

By Abby Clair | 14/05/2026

Muna’s fourth album, ‘Dancing On The Wall’, produced by the band’s own Naomi McPherson, leans hard into broken hearts and destructive interlopers. On the surface, it’s gleaming and euphoric, packed with the kind of enormous choruses and shimmering synth lines MUNA could probably write in their sleep by now. But underneath, there’s a nervous energy running through the whole thing, a sense of unease shaped by an increasingly fractured political landscape and a world that feels permanently on edge. Musically, the trio stretch themselves just enough to keep things volatile. The glossy ’80s synthpop remains intact, but this time it’s cut through with flashes of glam-rock swagger and wiry indie grit. Even the album’s most immediate moments feel faintly poisoned. ‘It Gets So Hot’ initially plays like a sweat-slick ode to desire, yet the heat hanging over Los Angeles feels oppressive rather than seductive, thick, airless, impossible to escape. Likewise, the buoyant ‘Mary Jane’ masks a story of emotional ruin and substance dependency beneath its sugar-rush hooks. Then there’s ‘So What’, one of the album’s sharpest sleights of hand: a heartbreak anthem disguised as champagne-soaked indifference. Katie Gavin drifts through bougie parties and hollow validation, clinging to strangers’ approval as though it might fill the gap someone else left behind. “It’s our best work without you in it,” she insists, with the kind of brittle conviction that only makes the loneliness hit harder. At its most confrontational, though, ‘Dancing On The Wall’ abandons metaphor altogether. ‘Big Stick’ is startlingly direct, a state-of-the-nation pop song that swaps vague gestures for outright accusation. Through the portrait of a quietly complicit suburban mother funding imperial violence with blind patriotism and passive comfort, MUNA sketch a society sleepwalking through atrocity. By the time Gavin spits, “We give kids in Palestine PTSD / But we’ll never fucking ever give them something to eat,” the song has shed any pretence of subtlety. In a pop landscape where most artists still seem terrified of saying anything concrete, the bluntness feels less shocking than overdue. For all its lyrical evolution and occasional detours into rougher, heavier textures, though, ‘Dancing On The Wall’ never strays too far from the sound MUNA have spent years perfecting. And crucially, it doesn’t need to. Reinvention is overrated when your instincts are this sharp. What MUNA understand better than most of their peers is that consistency, when executed with this much precision and emotional intelligence, can feel every bit as thrilling as transformation.