Bartees Strange : Horror
Bartees Strange isn’t getting boxed in for you or anybody. He said so himself on the brief and exhilarating “Mossblerd” on 2020’s debut album Live Forever. There’s a sense of restlessness running through his work that goes beyond the chameleonic sound the Baltimore-based artist has made his calling card. He’s got confidence to burn; it was there on the early-days album Magic Boy (a comparatively obscure but crucial part of his journey), and then amplified when the world started to take notice. Nowadays, Strange is signed to indie luminaries 4AD and hitting it off with in-demand producer Jack Antonoff, behind the boards for the follow-up to 2022’s Farm to Table. But don’t mistake that for settling down.
The seeds of this record were planted around the same time as its predecessor, but true to its title, Horror comes from a much darker place, kicked off by “Too Much”, an ode to romantic dysfunction that somehow manages to come across as one of Strange’s most confident songs yet. It’s an ideal way to kick off the record, indicating that things are about to get personal. This is all him—no need to inhabit or invent characters to express the point. He’s come a long way, both figuratively and literally: how does someone born in Ipswich end up in “Baltimore”? That song is both an ode to his current surroundings and one which finds him pining for the lives he could have had. It’s nothing less than a gut punch, which also speaks to the specific fears and horrors that come with existing as a Black person in 2025: “When I think about places I could live / I wonder if one’s good enough to raise a few Black kids.”
The feeling of assuredness interspersed throughout the record comes and goes, with the exhilaration and panic of a new relationship explored on moody club banger “Lovers”. For all its four-to-the-floor energy, it’s one of the most vulnerable moments on the record, searching for stability amid moments of painful self-examination; falling short and still pushing through. It pairs up well with lead single “Sober” as two markedly different songs that explore similar feelings—namely being in love and not being the best at showing it—tinged with regret and a desire for escape, important moments on an album on which Strange allows himself to feel everything, with the kind of reckless abandon that means he’s happiest occupying several different lanes at once, as opposed to staying in one.
“Wants Needs” is a song that’s been looking for a home for a few years, and it finds one here, with Strange examining where he’s at as an artist, as well as the push-and-pull relationship between a musician and their fans, not to mention the anxiety that comes with no longer being the flavor of the month: “I’ve tried to be grateful for living while punching the top of a coffin / I still wanna live forever, but I’m not the one you want.” It’s an especially powerful song on a record that’s full of them—there’s a sense of cohesion throughout the album’s 42-minute runtime that’s much harder to pull off than it sounds, with moments of sharp contrast that add depth to the listening experience.
On first listen it may seem difficult to fathom how songs like “Wants Needs” and “17” can exist on the same record—the latter stunning for different reasons, as it recounts Strange’s struggle to fit in (“The first time I felt impending doom was realising I’m too Black for the room”)—but repeated listens help everything to make sense. There’s a difference between realizing you can do it all and actually following through; the time for being passive is over, and Bartees Strange, as he expresses on the album’s closing track, wants to be more than just a “Backseat Banton” in his life, to face his fears and conquer them. Horror, a deceptively sure-footed album about scrabbling to find a sense of confidence, is the work of someone who’s set on making his mark, no matter what; someone who’s unquestionably in the driver’s seat.
Label: 4AD
Year: 2025
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Bartees Strange : Horror
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