We Must Become the Pitiless Censors of Ourselves

Maus has a full set of songs whose architecture is just as sophisticated and riveting in actuality as it is in theory.

American producer conjures up dazzling electronics. [Aug. 2011, p. 123]

Anyone who's enjoyed a fruitful encounter with Ariel Pink's home-recorded oeuvre should also find plenty to love about John Maus. [Jul 2011, p.91]

He has incorporated some New Wave signposts, with a little melancholy disco, constantly refining what might be the right kind of landscape for his deeply yearning, compelling vocal.

This [Closing number "Believer], the apotheosis of the album, is overwhelming, and like the rest of this excellent record, exists in a hazy netherworld that can be a discomfiting place to inhabit. But stick with Maus, and you're with him on his profound and affecting spiritual journey.

It's hugely enjoyable, even without any theoretical justification.

So wonderfully compelling is it all that it's easy to miss how seriously impassioned Maus can be.

From chintzy keyboards to karaoke-style performances, Maus exaggerates the stereotypically artificial to tap into something real.

On his third album, John Maus continues his pursuit of immediacy-in-action mixed with a certain calm, developing a further tension that infuses both his music and words.

Unlike Before Today, Maus' third release is less moody, more consistent in its sense of oddness and intrigue. We Must Become... is also consistent in that nearly every track manages to top what came before it.

With just a touch of enunciation and a dash of well-placed bombast, these songs could be bona fide hits.

As a whole, We Must Become the Pitiless Censors of Ourselves doesn't necessarily offer the highs of his past two albums, or something as immediate as "Rights for Gays," but it is a remarkably cohesive listen.

Where the vocals are murky, the synthesizers have a queasy over-clarity, poised somewhere between the repellent and the sublime. [Aug 2011, p.58]

It makes sense that the conceptual gravitas behind an album like this wouldn't have enough fuel for 11 songs (the originals of this scene weren't necessarily known for their full-lengths) but it certainly would've been amazing to see him pull it off. Specific, loving, authentic, but limiting, it may leave us wanting more--but there's no doubt that John Maus made the album he wanted to make.

If the original Assault on Precinct 13 soundtrack had been made by a time-shifted Let's Dance Bowie, you'd be most-way there. [Aug. 2011, p. 104]

This is where the irony comes in--he sacrifices most of his originality to referential tropes. Through successfully emulating noteworthy keyboardists of the past, he nearly obliterates his own identity as a practitioner. It's not that he isn't good, either. He's too good.

Maus sounds as pretentious as his album title when he's at his least self-censorious, delivering empty, eye-rolling provocations on Cop Killer and Matter Of Fact.

We Must Become often hints at Joy Division's stylish brand of post-punk ennui, but by treating it as little more than a gimmick, Maus loses the urgency that makes Curtis's music so endurable.