Across The World

John Maus “Believer”

I love the way John Maus gets the keyboards in this song to sound as though he’s spraying the listener down with some kind of sparkle hose. The sparkly keyboard part nearly drowns out the rest of the arrangement, which seems to be the point – it’s like how shoegazer bands foreground distorted guitar in order to simulate an overwhelming sensual experience. But whereas the best shoegazer music push the raw sexuality associated with guitar rock into soft focus, Maus’ keyboards ring out with great clarity. He’s not changing the way we think of this keyboard sound, only amping it up so that the dreamy romance we associate with synthpop is totally overpowering.

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