‘If you don’t mind, I’m just gonna take a breath,” Muna’s lead singer Katie Gavin tells a packed Village Underground. The Californian three-piece’s last major tour was as support for Harry Styles, playing to crowds that dwarf those of east London’s dank clubs. Their second album – the winkingly titled Saves the World – deals in part with the disconnect between spending months soaking up the adrenaline of stage life and returning to “normalcy” in between, over euphoric synths and thumping great melodies.
This is their first live show since the album was released just three days earlier. If they’re nervous about getting back to life in the limelight and baring their souls on stage, the breathing breaks are the only sign. As the whole room takes two deep breaths in near silence, Gavin adds: “Actually, do you guys wanna just breathe?” “Yeah,” bandmate Naomi McPherson quips. “Music is cool but have you tried breathing?”
But this is a crowd hungry for Muna’s existential pop, and the band are midway through a set that tempers shared misery with tear-inducing reassurances. After that breath, they launch into Never, the emotional crest of the show that claims retirement from love and music. Liturgical drones and monotonous vocals build and wash against intense harmonies, wailing guitars and a breakdown that borders on industrial techno as Gavin marches her way through a powerhouse vocal performance.
The euphoria of fan favourite I Know a Place, the penultimate song, seems gargantuan and unstoppable as it swells around a crowd that is packed with women and LGBTQ people, sharing in a space that’s been carved out for them. Guitarist Josette Maskin powerslides and McPherson grins and shakes her head as if she can’t believe it. It’s a beautifully devastating ending, but elevated to new emotional heights when followed by It’s Gonna Be Okay, Baby, Gavin’s inventively Auto-Tuned confessional that she delivers staring into the middle distance, somewhere between a smile and a sob.
It’s a triumph of music and love over despair. Muna might not save the world, but they put on a show that certainly feels as if it could.
