Benjamin Booker: LOWER

There is something very badass about this record. And I’m not just taking about the killer beat on the first track, “Black Opps.” Which, as far as I can tell is a single about playing a video game called Black Ops. But maybe also about dying in real life? Or the black experience in America? Honestly, though, I don’t give a crap. It’s cool. Like hearing Mellow Gold for the first time back in the day. Okay, not that revelatory, but the aesthetic isn’t totally divorced from that mish-mash of a record.

Because what else do you get when you mash up your singer-songwriter thing with indie rock, alt. hip-hop and glitchy electronics? I swore I wasn’t going to mention Basehead again in a review as long as I lived, but here I go again. This is arguably better music, but something about the beats and the kind of whisper singing style just brings me back. In fact, this is much better music. Basehead was more transformative than it was good, I suppose. But this album manages to be experimental without being annoying. There aren’t weird noises and bleeps and bloops for no reason; it all feels like it fits. And it still manages to be compelling pop music. Which is a tough line to walk. Because have you ever heard those early Beck experimental pastiches? It’ll make you want to stab your fucking ears out.

For some reason I’m not finding the words to describe Booker’s music and this album. It’s an amalgam of styles and clearly a long time in the making. And maybe it’s those seven years of nothing that gives this thing its unique sound and construction. As if all the ideas in his head kind of laid themselves over each other and tumbled out on a record that is a bit undefinable. Even if I unconsciously envision the 2006 Curious George movie from Hipster Jr.’s childhood every time the track “Pompeii Statues” rolls around. I’m not comparing him with Jack Johnson (who did the music for that film), but that song is weirdly in that lane. I honestly can’t stop listening to this thing — and maybe it’s because it reveals new and cool things every listen — or perhaps there’s something about the great beats and the unobtrusive nature of it that makes for an album that you can just vibe to in your headphones on each and every commute. Impress your friends and throw it on at a party and pretend you’re one of those cool-guy bartenders in the East Village in the 90s who had the inside track on hip. They’ll never know you heard about it from me. Who is definitely not that guy.