Benjamin Booker : LOWER
It’s hard to believe that Benjamin Booker—the 35-year-old singer/songwriter and guitarist whose acclaimed 2014 debut quickly earned him tour spots with Jack White and Courtney Barnett—is only on his third album. After all, he’s not only managed to make a name for himself but a sound of his very own. But a wise musician knows that, when the train starts hurtling too fast and its occupants don’t know what to do, pumping the breaks can be the smartest move. And thus Booker held out for seven years before stepping up with his latest album, LOWER.
LOWER is an illustrious document that sheds any semblance of pretentiousness and instead keeps the limelight on Booker’s creativity, emotional sensitivity, and personal glory to shed through. All of which is to say that you’ll do yourself a disservice by neatly prejudging this record as a genre-specific one. To the contrary, Booker presents a fresh perspective free from cliche, which he delivers using a kitchen-sink approach—lo-fi, hip-hop, dream and noise pop, ambient and indie rock—to create something entirely his own.
Last we heard from Mr. Booker, it was via his appearance with Kenny Segal on “Doves,” an outlandish, nine-minute bonus track for an Armand Hammer record. It’s an homage to Pink Floyd of sorts, with effects replacing most guitar parts. LOWER doesn’t take such ostentatious and disruptive twists and turns, but New Orleans-based Booker certainly knew his objective when creating his third album: now is the time to show the skills he’s acquired since his first two releases and put them to the test. And for good measure, he brought in underground hip-hop mastermind and Armand Hammer collaborator Kenny Segal to sit behind the boards.
Surely, the most common mistake that a singer/songwriter can make is to mix their music with vocals dominating virtually every nook and cranny of the mix. But an artist like Booker, confident in their ability to craft music over their strength at or yearning for seizing the mic and belting out their most vibrant vocals, shows a far greater confidence in their artistic and creative abilities than how well they can master the art of torch singing.
The themes that resonate most frequently on LOWER are reminiscent of those on Booker’s 2014’s self-titled debut and 2017 follow-up, Witness: intractable pain and longing, isolation and anger, and race and spirituality in the modern age. “I watched the blood drip to the street/ The spirit came in flames under the moonlight/ Oh, Marinette take me from here/ I want the world/ I wanna live a good life,” Booker sings in his distinct, hoarse voice on LOWER’s second track, “LWA in the Trailer Park.”
On the triptych of songs at the end of the album (“Show and Tell,” “Heavy on My Mind” and “Hope for the Night Time”), at which point Booker has made concrete his trust with the listener, he lets down his guard completely. So much so that, on the final track, he reveals the conclusion he’s reached in working through the existential matters at the center of the preceding songs. “I want more than a dream,” he intones, in practically a whisper, on “Heavy on My Mind.” And then, on the impossibly tender “Hope for the Night Time,” “Smile, smile, smile to the very end/ Smile and just play pretend/ Alright, alright.”
Label: Thirty Tigers
Year: 2025
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Benjamin Booker : LOWER
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