BO11: "We Must Become The Pitiless Censors Of Ourselves" by John Maus

It was during my second Master’s degree course work that I more deeply understood the concept of simulacra (via the work of Baudrillard), which is an apt lens with which to gaze upon post-millennial pop culture. Simulacra are copies of that which no longer exists, or may never have existed in the first place, such as the “Fifties diner” or the construction of “The Eighties” as seen in films like The Wedding Singer. The garbled recasting of All Thing Eighties into more or less modern forms bugs me not a little, which I guess would happen when a personally transformative epoch is next up for plunder and pander, but when it’s done right, it hits me in a way that is not at all rational.

And while I’m sure that John Maus didn’t lay out those ground rules when he made We Must Become The Pitiless Censors Of Ourselves, who’s to say he didn’t? (He’s a professor of philosophy, among other things.) It’s a vision of a specific ‘80s-linked genre (synth-pop) that’s just slightly out of focus, musically and lyrically, the gauze of history obscuring any clear stares of analysis. It’s deeply melodic, quite funny in spots, and over before you know it, which makes you play it again, thus furthering the copy-after-subjective-copy conceit of artistic consumption and consideration once it gets between the ears. It has a song called “Cop Killer” that’s not a cover of Body Count, and it has a cover of a Molly Nilsson song (“Hey Moon!”) that is really just Maus singing along with the original, like a pre-teen in a closed bedroom. It’s seriously good music that doesn’t take itself too seriously, and that’s something that more people should try and copy.

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