Recommended tracks: “Eastside Girls”, “On Call”, “Why Do I Get A Good Feeling”
Similar artists: Holly Humberstone, The Japanese House, Haute & Freddy
Four years after their self-titled album, MUNA returns with Dancing On The Wall. It doesn’t feel like a reset so much as a continuation with sharper edges. The hooks land faster, the writing is more focused, and the record stays locked into its emotional center without trying to resolve it.
MUNA has always moved between sounds while keeping a clear identity. Each project leans into a different production style, but the writing stays rooted in emotional specificity. Here, they fully commit to an 80s-inspired palette: synth-heavy and bright on the surface, but built around tension that never fully settles.
“It Gets So Hot” opens the record in motion. The synths arrive immediately and don’t really let go, setting the tone before anything has time to settle. The song is about escalation—heat, tension, desire—and it treats those feelings as inseparable. Everything builds at once, with nothing isolated from anything else.
That momentum carries straight into “Dancing On The Wall,” the lead single. The hook lands quickly, but the song works because of how it builds pressure rather than releasing it too early. It keeps stacking intensity until the bridge finally lets it spill over. The writing stays specific throughout, especially in “Bought your favorite ice cream, left it in the backseat / Just another sweet thing you let go bad.” It sits in that familiar space of being stuck on someone who gives you nothing, while still deciding to stay there anyway.
“Eastside Girls” is where everything expands outward. Naomi McPherson’s production here is especially sharp, particularly in the way the chorus keeps building: “Eastside girls / They take me to All Time / Westside girls all / Stuck in their Sublime Beachside world / They want me on all fours / Eastside girls.”
It never really settles; it just keeps pushing forward without losing control. The bridge is where it fully tips over: “LA, Berlin / Haircut, safety pin / Detroit, Tokyo / All things astrological / Nashville, London / Negroni with the nice gin / Austin, Paris / Fuck, she’s non-monogamous…” It has that rapid-fire, list-driven structure that recalls Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire,” but reworked into something more chaotic and contemporary. Everything about it feels overstimulated in the best way.
That push and pull continues across the next stretch. “On Call” becomes more vulnerable, focusing on emotional availability that isn’t returned. “So What” sits between confidence and denial without committing to either side, and that tension becomes the point. Even when the tempo drops, the record doesn’t soften; it just redirects pressure inward rather than outward.
“Big Stick” breaks that pattern. It’s the most direct moment on the album, and it doesn’t soften its edges. “We give weapons to dictators and apartheid states / We give kids in Palestine PTSD / But we’ll never fucking ever give them something to eat / And if you got a problem with it you could end up in jail” lands as the clearest statement here—not an aside, but the core of the song. It ties back to the album’s broader ideas about power and identity, and how both shape desire whether acknowledged or not. It stands out because it refuses to dilute itself.
The second half of the album keeps circling the same emotional ground in different forms. “Mary Jane” turns jealousy into something external, framing addiction as a competing presence in the relationship rather than a background detail. “Why Do I Get A Good Feeling” sits in the gap between instinct and logic, where the outcome is already understood but still chosen anyway. Nothing here resolves cleanly, and the album doesn’t force it to.
By the time “Buzzkiller” closes the record, it feels less like an ending and more like stepping out mid-thought. It’s more restrained than what comes before it, but that restraint feels intentional. “You think I’m so easy to love / Baby please you’re just buzzed” lands with distance instead of drama, reframing what came before without trying to summarize it.
What Dancing On The Wall ultimately does is stay inside tension instead of pretending it needs resolution. It sharpens the instincts MUNA has always had—writing that’s specific without over-explaining, and production that pushes forward without smoothing anything out. The record doesn’t resolve its contradictions, but that feels deliberate. It’s about sitting in desire, imbalance, and overstimulation without stepping back to tidy them up. By the end, nothing is fully settled, but everything feels more defined, as if the album isn’t trying to move past these feelings so much as learn how to exist within them.
