Big swings and (mostly) big hits on the New-Orleans artist’s experimental third album.
Benjamin Booker is not an artist to whom subtlety comes naturally. At its best, his music is a dark, lacerating and often deliberately abrasive melange of punk, blues, country and a dash lo-fi hip-hop production. And LOWER sees these disparate elements brought together into something approaching harmony.
Since 2014’s self-titled debut, Booker’s influences have been worn on his sleeve. There’s a deep, Faulkneresque, southern-gothic influence here. His music sounds like swamps and poplar trees; drawing comparisons to the scorching punk blues of The Gun Club. Certainly, there are echoes of that same Psychobilly sound in LOWER‘s opener ‘Black Opps’ and ‘Speaking With The Dead’ alike.
The introduction of more experimental production, only flirted with previously on 2017’s Witness, points to a new set of influences for LOWER. ‘New World’, in particular, sees producer Kenny Segal’s lo-fi flair take centre stage. Many of the songs on this album have taken on the textual illusion of Earl Sweatshirt taking his producers to record an album at Muscle Shoals. The vision is to be applauded, even if some of the production flourishes (the tremolo effect on ‘Pompeii Statues’, for example) fall into the category of ‘unnecessary ear-jizz’.
Let us be clear, this experimentation is necessary from the perspective of both artist and listener – hearing something new is always preferable to a rehash of old inspirations, and Booker is no revanchist. ‘Same Kind of Lonely’, the album’s first single, is perhaps the best illustration of this new sound. Guitars crash and burn, synths churn out noise, gunshots and cries are in the mix, all anchored by his rasping tenor.
The central tenet of Booker’s sound – its USP, for want of a better term – remains his voice. It is a unique instrument, capable of capturing a spectrum of emotions. On both ‘Slow Dance In A Gay Bar’ and especially ‘Heavy On My Mind’ production takes a backseat, and the emotional acuity of voice, the vocal equivalent of a pack of cigarettes, takes precedence.
The album closer ‘Hope For The Night’ covers familiar country-lyric territory: getting thrown out of bars, finding “hope for the weary” in someone’s arms. The lyrical themes are as old as Hank Williams, the production straight from someone like Knxwledge’s back catalogue.
Benjamin Booker takes risks. He is certainly not one for pulling musical punches. When these risks pay off – as they do, on the whole – LOWER prevails as something utterly, fearlessly unique that makes the hair on the back of the listener’s neck stand on end.
featured image: Trenity Thomas
