[DARK POP] M.A.U./Mira, Un Lobo!- Children Playing Adults/Serotonin Video Reviews

[DARK POP] M.A.U./Mira, Un Lobo!- Children Playing Adults/Serotonin Video Reviews

[DARK POP] M.A.U./Mira, Un Lobo!- Children Playing Adults/Serotonin Video Reviews

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To caress the side of a cliche until one last drop comes out: life’s a fucking stage. And you can play your bit part, though most of us do it unconsciously. We may think we’re radicals because we darted off to Thailand and got laid at the Full Moon Party; but ultimately the lines we draw, the lanes we thereby drive our lives in, relatively aren’t that different from everybody else. We grow up, we fuck and fuck around a bit, we get married, we fuck some more and the hetero among us pop about a baby (biology willing) while the queer have just started down that youngster gravy train. Those paths don’t exclude us from awesome lives, but you got to know why you’re doing it.

To be transgressive, is to be self-aware; and to be self aware is a ton of pain. I normally don’t do double video reviews (different bands, different missions), but since two of the most thoughtful bands out there, M.A.U. and Mira Un, Lobo!, share similar members’ minds and a commitment to exposing the fraud of the performative nature of our happy lives, I think together they tell a more powerful tale.

M.A.U. Children Playing Adults
[Follow M.A.U. on Facebook and Soundcloud]

Misery is inter-generational if we let it. Mash’Allah to my mother, but how the fuck did she manage a life having me at 16? ‘Children Playing Adults’ would say not very well; and my neurosis would agree with you. So many times parents think they need to be (and are) shouting the authority of Shakespeare, when really they’ve got a Teen People mind and a Tiger Beat control over their infatuations. When, really, we’re all just ‘Children Playing Adults’. 11 years into my adulthood and I couldn’t [honestly] tell you what that word truly means except that I’m better at avoiding complete and total meltdown when I take risks and I don’t cry myself to sleep anymore when a crush doesn’t ring me up for a booty call redux.

M.A.U.’s video pulls some amazing Wes Anderson/Sofia Coppola influences to absolutely lambaste the absurdity of all these quiet moments of familial seriousness. A wise mother, a contemplative father: all that is bullshit in this world, which has more fun with all the lies we tell ourselves at the dinner table than anything I’ve seen this year.

There’s a moment in this video about 2 minutes in where the band is turned into children and the video’s protagonists pose for the quintessential family photo, and the band is wearing white masks as if to say that the children’s future is to be determined still by the actions of the parents. And then a breast is popped out in all its glory. And holy fuck, I couldn’t stop laughing. Not because–OMG BREAST!–but because all the power and the life of the actress becomes clear in that moment and she looks so alive, so pure that you can’t help but want to be her.

Mira, Un Lobo! Serotonin
[Follow Mira Un, Lobo on Soundcloud and Facebook]

Mira, Un Lobo!’s take is about collapse. Collapse like a sudden squashing of the skyscraper of your heart when you look out at the world and feel like all the lines that drew you from your past have dispersed and you’re just a boundary less blob of meat that spews red, blooded fear for the wolves to take scent of. Here, the performative is a way to connect with the rest of the world: we can wear a faux face, but if we emit a black hole of a heart, all we’ll suck back in are supernovas of suffering.

Mira, Un Lobo’s video is heartbreaking, because I’ve been there. I’ve sat in public feeling like I’m going to suffocate at the thought of being one of them: all those content people all around me. The video’s hero’s woes feel doubly tragic, though, because they’re so sudden. But that’s common when your life was built on stones of an identity we got just by going through the motions.  The hero watches old performances of his life at it’s ‘best’, not to reclaim who he is by osmosis, but to understand for the first time what really makes him, him.

And with it, the performativity of all his energy shines authentic. He can play his bit part on the global stage, a true actor in the troupe; and the world is drawn to him as a shining dynamic beacon of pure spirit.

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Kavi Senior Editor. Currently based in Bangkok. I review dark indietronica/pop with my signature style of delving into the sexuality, sensuality and emotionality of every song. If you'd like me to premiere your track, contact me at the email below or at soundcloud.com/discordbeing