Benjamin Booker – POWER [Fire Next Time Records 2025]
Eleven years after his debut as a garage/blues wunderkind backed by a Jack White co-sign, Booker sheds his traditionalist skin by consciously corrupting his sound with the aid of underground hip-hop architect Kenny Segal. It’s a move that obsessives might’ve read in the tea leaves – Booker was featured on two of Segal’s beats slotted for use by billy woods in ‘23. The only vestige he retains of his previously up-tempo and warm compositions is his soulful, eternally hoarse voice; everything else’s been replaced by a nocturnal structured destruction of shoegaze distortions, programmed electronica, and musique concrete. It’s still a rock album, though one that positions itself in the Avant Garde Left Turn lineage that usually earns a cult and makes the most sense in retrospect. With each release Booker’s been markedly older and more lyrically articulate – at album three and age 35 the very axiom at his core has been dismantled; his assertion of belief’s power to allow for survival has curdled into a cynical realism bordering on nihilism. After all – as he notes on the outset – what use is chanting in support of BLM when COINTELPRO already destroyed a century’s worth of work? Not that it’s all doom and gloom, as the empire crumbles folks still have to fall in love. The filler sustains usually quite well and there’s always some moment or two that’ll tickle the pleasure center in each song. There’s even hope for change in the finale, until he goes back to drinking anyway. 4.2/5
Blondshell – Blondshell [Partisan 2023]
A bisexual white woman in her late twenties who loves TV and finds herself in sexual and romantic entanglements that she knows will be detrimental to her? Tale as old as time. And an addict? America the beautiful. Sabrina Teitelbaum’s debut under her current artistic name is a grrrl grunge record equally in debt to the Cranberries/Kim Deal-led wave of 90s rockers and because of her hating her work under the title BAUM when she was trying to be the next Lorde. Her insights into pathology are succinct enough to evoke a grimace from those of us who know how true they are. “Logan’s a dick/I’m learning that’s hot”, “You’ll make a killer of a pacifist”, “I think my kink is when you tell me that you think I’m pretty”, “Not in a position to judge/and I know that with drugs it’s never enough”. Over bursts of distortion that’ll convey every nuance of rage and ennui, it’ll scratch the itch you think Snail Mail or Beabadoobee say they will. 4.0/5
Stevie Wonder – Music of My Mind [Motown 1972]
Re-signed to Berry Gordy’s Motown under another subsidiary with total creative freedom and a hell of a lot more money Little Stevie is now a grown ass man. One who’s still obsessed with love and loving though now that he’s been freed of the weighted expectations of commercial appeal he does himself one better by becoming the zeitgeist itself. Previously his producers would be chasing the charts, now the charts were chasing him. Which makes sense, Wonder started writing much much much better songs, informed by honky tonk, his usual funk and soul, and the rock & roll apparatus that dominated white America. Check out his ambition too, starting off what would’ve then been side A with not one but two tracks over seven minutes, he released the worse one as a single so that when fans dropped needle into it they’d be greeted with the most fun, most funky, most communal song on an album by a one man band. I can’t let this be a rave though, he’s still got filler on the back end up until his clumsy ode to evil sends us off with a pretty sound and not much to say. 4.0/5
The Mountain Goats – Get Lonely [4AD]
He’s fighting for some clarity in a fog that his real life doesn’t quite reflect. He has a wife that loves him, for example. 3.6/5
(“Woke Up New”, “Get Lonely”)
Illuminati Hotties – Kiss Yr Frenemies [Tiny Engines 2018]
Studio rat makes sonically clear and lyrically confused songs with a post-emo pallet that shows her enthusiasm and inexperience. She hasn’t even changed her voice yet. 3.7/5
(“Shape of My Hands”, “Pressed 2 Death”)
OsamaSon – Jump Out [Atlantic 2025]
The vein of hip-hop that reveres Whole Lotta Red has revealed itself to be as persistent as men who took The Chronic’s sexism as gospel in the 90s – this shit ain’t going away. Which is curious and I’d say almost pernicious to the genre – since lyrics are minimized what do any of these rage rappers have to say? On the production side, all of these rappers and their cohort are surrounded by the kind of technicolor rave 808s that make ketamine sound like a necessity just to cope with the intensity. His questionable name aside, OsamaSon seems to find a kind of pleasant middle ground, chanting and chirping his songs while surrounded by what one critic called “drums so deep and extended they become shoegaze”. It helps that he’s got boyish-good looks and seems generally respectful, and people thought rap was a fad in the 70’s when it started. Keep watching I suppose. 3.5/5
JPEGMAFIA – LP! [EQT Recordings/Republic]
Sounding tired but defiant Barrington Henricks replaces most of the whirrs and crunches of his sound with bleeps and bloops to convince his haters that, what, he’s legit or something? Bro we know already. 3.6/5
Ted Lucas – Ted Lucas [Third Man Records 1975]
Recently reissued debut album by a white Motown session guitarist who fancied himself a folk singer whilst his career imploded around him it’s supposedly an influence on some modern folks. Pleasantly Bon Iver in the beginning, annoyingly technical at the end. 3.4/5
Cosmic Hero 