Sunday Conversation: Why MUNA Is Music’s Next Great Band

AUSTIN, TEXAS – MARCH 16: (L-R) Naomi McPherson, Katie Gavin, and Josette Maskin of Muna perform … [+] onstage at ‘Saddest Factory SXSW Music Showcase’ during the 2022 SXSW Conference and Festivals at Mohawk Austin on March 16, 2022 in Austin, Texas. (Photo by Chris Saucedo/Getty Images for SXSW)

Getty Images for SXSW

There is no one path to success in the music industry. So the stories can often be unpredictable. Like a band leaving their major label deal behind and then becoming the next big thing in music.

Certainly doesn’t sound like a blueprint to music stardom. And yet that is exactly the unique road L.A.-based trio MUNA find themselves on. After the trio of Katie Gavin, Josette Maskin and Naomi McPherson released their second album, Saves the World, in 2019, the band parted ways with RCA.

While that could have been disastrous for some, it has turned out to be the best thing that could have ever happened to MUNA. The band took the time during the COVID lockdown to reassess who they wanted to be as a group, signed with Phoebe Bridgers’ Saddest Factory Records label and just released their brilliant third album, MUNA, this past Friday (June 24).

Suddenly the trio have become press darlings and are the next great band in music. I spoke with the trio about the making of MUNA, the women that inspire them musically, why songs don’t come alive till they are played on stage and a future album named divorce bangers.

Steve Baltin: Have you been pleasantly surprised by how strong the response to this has been?

Katie Gavin: Yeah, definitely. Like a lot of other people in the pandemic, there was this sense of you kind of just have to go along for the ride, that life has put us all on. And we had to sit in a lot of uncertainty. And to be honest, we were already in that place, even before the pandemic started, and before we got dropped by RCA, because I think there was already this feeling of we were really un-recouped at that label. And we weren’t sure if we had continued to make more music with them, if we would have been able to continue our legacy of making the music that we wanted to make, because maybe there would be more pressure. And I think getting dropped and having the momentum of our career just kind of screech to a halt, also because of the pandemic, it forced some big conversations. We’ve been a band for a really long time now, coming up in a couple of years, it’ll be a decade. And I think, like any long term relationship, you have to have hard conversations where you’re acknowledging what of your needs are getting met and what is not and what compromises you’re willing to make and what you’re not. And so there was a lot of just going back to the core of why do we do this and do we still want to do it? And kind of turning over whatever the result was gonna be. And going back to what MUNA is in its simplest form, I do think that we felt very held in the sense of signing to Phoebe’s label was kind of this natural thing. It was an opportunity that came to us because we were lucky enough to be respected as artists and musicians by Phoebe and she just wanted to work with us and she wanted us to do what we’ve been doing. And so we got lucky in that way. And yeah, I would say in a way I’m surprised by the response to things, but it also just makes sense in the way of life happening in the time that you would least expect it and just like life having a funny way of working out when you’re not planning it to. All the success that we’re having now it just feels like something that’s out of our control. All we did was show up and continue to work and work on our relationships to each other and work on the songs and then everything else we just were like, “We’ll see what happens.”

Baltin: I love Phoebe. I think that what you’re talking about is a common denominator of the greatest artists going all through the decades, from Phoebe back to Patti Smith, Tom Waits, whoever, Maxwell and I were just talking about this not long ago. It’s being authentic in your music and letting everybody else sort of come to it. So when you started to go back to what the basis of what MUNA is, as you put it, were there things that you found that kind of surprised you?

Naomi McPherson: I think we were mostly driven to the same self-analysis that most people were driven to during COVID in the sense of like, “Why do I do what I do and let me evaluate the reasons that I should continue doing this and how can I ensure that this is a healthy sort of career path for me?” And I think we had, like Katie was saying, a lot of conversations just within our little friendship group and just making sure that everyone’s vibe was good enough for this to continue. And I think, mostly, the experience of making a record in this time has just been a return in a lot of ways to like the insular nature of how we started making music and how we made music on the first record, even just for logistical reasons, just due to the fact that working with other people in a pandemic sounded like it was gonna be really hard. So we might as well just step up and be able to do all this s**t ourselves. So, I don’t know if that was necessarily an answer to what was surprising about it, but more just an honest reflection on the experience.

Baltin: Was there one song early on then in this writing that sort of shaped that direction?

Josette Maskin: For this record, I don’t know if it dictated the sound for the album, but the first song that I think led us on the path of actually making music again was “Solid.” “Solid” was the song that we just had fun at the beginning of not really making music together for a while. And once we started working on that, that opened the door to opening up songs that we actually had before, but weren’t maybe at the forefront of what we were focusing on. I know that making the song “Loudspeaker” was always a very definitive moment for me in the process of like, “Oh, we’re making music that is gonna affect someone, and that really matters.” And I think that song was always like a beacon as well in that record cycle of like, this music has purpose. And I think that’s always been kind of the star that we follow while making stuff.

Baltin: What was the actual first song written for the record?

Maskin: Probably “Solid” too, actually.

McPherson: Yeah. “Solid,” I think the beat is from 2017, but the song itself is from 2018 and we put it down for album two, it just didn’t fit. And I think we kind of sort of forgot about it for a time and then just had it in the back of our minds as one that could just be a short, fun, like slammer of a song. I think the first batch of songs that were written for this album or for whatever the next project following the second album was gonna be, were “Silk,” “No Idea” and “Handle Me,” which were all sort of worked on at the end of 2019 and the top of 2020.

Gavin: Yeah, I remember writing “Silk” really shortly after turning in Saves The World. And that happens to me. I don’t necessarily write for albums themselves. I just write songs as I go about living my life. But I do feel like “Silk” was very informed by this feeling of lightness that happened after we turned in Saves The World, which is a really heavy record, and just feeling like I had this weight off my shoulders. I was kind of like going into a new chapter. I was starting to date again, and I went out to a concert to see my friend Lou Roy play. And then I came home and just had this funny little melody in my head that was the pre-chorus of that song, the “life so fun” section. And it was so different than what was on Saves The World, but it felt like this new energy. AndI went to Nashville in the very beginning of 2020, right before the pandemic, and wrote the chorus of “Silk” with Daniel Tashian and Ian Fitchuk. And I could feel the tides turning. Saves The World was so in my head, and I really wanted the next album to be just more embodied and more fun and more like just in the realm of human relationships and sex and love and have this kind of playful nature. And so, I do feel like “Silk,” in a way, was a guide. But then there were so many twists and turns on the journey of making this record that you kind of lose sight of that overarching thing. And what happened is what happens every time, is that in the end, we realize, “Oh yeah, we kind of did make a record about that, “even though we weren’t thinking about it at the time, we were just showing up and working on whatever song was in front of us. But I do feel like that process informed the whole record, whether it was a conscious thing or it was subconscious.

Baltin: Were there albums or songs or artists that really influenced you in, or things that you sort of gravitated to going back to that shaped your views on that?

Gavin: Definitely. At that time I was really inspired by, as I often am, by Chicago house music. The stories and even the way that people are singing and the sensuality and just vulnerability in the frankness of desire that is in those songs, I think I was really drawn to. And then also I was really listening a lot at that time to the ’90s singer-songwriters, like Ani DiFranco, artists, women who were telling stories that just had this self-assuredness in them and were kind of brimming with agency. I was drawn to that a lot. And, yeah, I think this album overall, I’ve said this before, it’s very exploratory and it has a really vast array of influences. But I think that we were embracing the kind of playful image of us as like a pop, dyke boy band and playing with desire in that way. But also, it is really informed by Lilith Fair songwriters and women who were telling stories in a way that feels very close-up and personal. So there’s that element of my songwriting that’s always gonna be there, whether it’s a fully produced pop track or it’s more of a ballad.

Baltin: is there a recurring theme for each of you in this or things that kind of surprised you lyrically and musically when you go back and hear it as a collected work?

McPherson: I think the most interesting and fun thing to go back to the record and think about is just the fact that it can jump from sound to sound and feel a little bit anxious and frenetic in a way that I feel like is reflective of a lot of art that was made in this time. I think there’s something so playful and fun about when you get to the point with a song that you’re working on, that you’re like, “I don’t know how this is gonna fit on an album, but we’ll f**king make it work.” That, for me, is I think what retrospectively is such a cool experience with this record, just the freedom of being able to make kind of whatever and just be like, “Well, we’ll pull it off somehow.” And then I guess you just pull it off by believing in it and committing to it, and committing a little bit to the chaos. That’s my opinion, at least. That’s my opinion today.

Maskin: I think it’s just the truth that I still don’t know. I feel like my relationship with the songs is so dictated by how they feel in a live setting because that’s when I feel them in my body and we just haven’t really played the majority of these songs live yet. And I feel like I really understand the song when also our fans have had time with the songs and have imbued their own meaning to them. So ask me in seven months, that will be my answer.

Gavin: I have a story about when we put out our first album, About You. I was asked at the time about the title of the record and I think I was really convinced that I really had written a record that a lot of it was about this other person who I was really fixated on. And then I remember reading something a fan had written about the record afterwards and they were like, “And obviously, the title is ironic because it’s called About You, but it’s a record about the person who’s singing these songs; it says much more about her than it does about the person that she’s singing about.”And I just thought it was funny because it just shows how deluded you can be about what you’ve written about, and I think that that’s actually just as interesting. Asking an artist what they’ve written about and then seeing what they get wrong about themselves, that’s really fascinating because it also then dictates the path forward. It’s kind of what you said earlier about whatever you’ve written about, you kind of have this pull to then go and explore another piece because we’re all very expansive creatures and you’re never gonna get the whole thing right in one go. So all that to say, there’s a song on the record called “Loose Garment.” And the lyrics on the song are kind of about how I’m still a human that experiences emotions really deeply and I have a very deep range of emotion, but these emotions, I used to be really in their grip, and now as part of getting older and making just changes in my inner life, I have a little bit of space that allows me to experience a very wide range of emotion without losing myself in it. So I think that this is a document of just us coming of age a bit more and having more access to things like joy and choice. There is suffering and loss on this album, but there’s a lot more tenderness in my relationship with myself on the record, and there’s a celebration of that. So, yeah, I can’t condense it into one thing, but at least at this point, I am aware of the fact that I’m writing about myself.

Baltin: Are there artists that you admire for the way they’ve evolved?

Maskin: I would say Joni Mitchell. Every record of hers you can hear her growth sonically, and I’ve always just found it to be so interesting because I think you can get stuck in a trap, especially nowadays. Maybe it’s more of a reminder to not try to recreate something you’ve already done because it’s been successful and I feel like she always did something that was new and interesting to her no matter what and that was the guiding force to the songs that she was making.

McPherson: Yeah, definitely. I think in the music industry, there’s so much emphasis put on the works that you do as a young person, I think just because we’re a very youth-centric society. But a lot of the times I find the music that is the most influential and helpful to me is often made by women who are in their 40s.

So there are numerous artists that I’m obsessed with in that way. Joni being one of them, for sure. All my favorite stuff of hers is stuff that she made in the ’90s. And I love Shawn Colvin. I love divorce music. I think that is just some of the hottest s**t on the streets that people are sleeping on.

Baltin: The Chicks actually gave me their whole divorce playlist. So what are your top two divorce songs?

McPherson: There are so many good ones. I’m obsessed with the whole album, A Few Small Repairs by Shawn Colvin. I think there’s some divorce bangers on that record. I really did like the new Adele record, thought that some good divorce bangers on it. The Chicks have great divorce bangers.

Baltin: Just please tell me when you’re all older and the time is right, that you will make a record called Divorce Bangers.

McPherson: That’ll be sick.

Baltin: What’s the one song off this album that you are most excited to see how fans respond to it live?

Maskin: I’m actually gonna say this song, “What I Want,” which might be other people’s answers too. Naomi and I worked with our generalized production manager and everything man on getting our temper tones in and we were doing that and we’re like, “Oh f**k, this is gonna be sick.” And also the gays will go crazy.

Gavin: Yeah, that’s the one, undoubtedly.