After exactly six years since his last album, fusion bass maestro Stephen Lee Bruner, better known as Thundercat, proves his fire is still burning bright in his newest project “Distracted.” Now, don’t be mistaken, Bruner has been active outside of producing original albums, and his signature techno funk flair has graced projects like A$AP Rocky’s “Don’t Be Dumb,” JID’s “God Does Like Ugly” and longtime collaborator Mac Miller’s posthumous album “Balloonerism.”
The opener, “Candlelight,” introduces itself with the confidence Bruner has used to fuel all his solo albums. A solo-funk soul record is a hard sell nowadays, but the silky-smooth instrumentals and masterful bass playing that Bruner brings to the table make it a done deal. While the first half of the song features lovely background vocals as the instrumentation blends together, the second half is eager to jump into a synth breakdown, with a repetitive motif highlighting a wonderful display of jazz collective improvisation with a bass riff, keyboard riff and drum riff, all happening simultaneously.
As a beautiful send-off to Mac Miller, who was a longtime friend, Bruner finished and released the collaboration they had had in the works, “She Knows Too Much,” as the third single to “Distracted.” It is almost impossible to encapsulate how beautiful it was to hear the two artists on a new composition, especially with Miller’s signature humor as he raps, “She way out of my league, can’t buy her love / All the books she read, she know way too much,” and Bruner’s ad-libbing in between, softly singing, “Can’t buy her love!” Bruner’s production and musical stylings have always harmonized perfectly with Miller’s laid-back deliveries and almost jazzy vocal tones.
With Thundercat at the helm, the collaborations featured on this album are uplifted by his trance-like productions. The best example of this comes with the fifth track, “Funny Friends,” featuring A$AP Rocky. A$AP’s powerful bars float across a dense beat, with ambient drums and cloudy bass riffs, all sounding as though they were recorded in a concert hall with a lovely echo. Bruner’s chorus especially shines, as the entire song ascends to another plane of psychedelic harmonies, with closely-packed background vocals, sweeping synths and the drums coming out in full force.
Bruner’s collaboration with Tame Impala results in a psychedelic opus for the two, where the two trade choruses and production styles as their styles meld perfectly. WILLOW makes her mark on “ThunderWave,” where, even if the song itself is a bit more lackluster than other cuts, the feeling of floating above the rest of the world is washed ashore with the samples of ocean waves and twinkly synths.
Bruner’s writing style has matured, but he still maintains a distinct sense of humor that makes his albums all the more enjoyable. “Anakin Learns His Fate” references the sensational lead character from the Star Wars prequels as Bruner compares himself to the character. In the same way that Anakin later becomes Darth Vader, Bruner explores the idea that he too might be destined to not be any good for the world. While humorous, the underlying insecurities are quite serious and touch every song on the record. It’s easily disguised by the beautiful harmonies, but if anything, such harmonies are examples of how Bruner is “distracting” himself from his darker thoughts.
“Candlelight” itself is about another one of Bruner’s creative partners who passed away, Meghan Stabile, whom he describes as candlelight. “Great Americans” flows like a stream of consciousness, with Bruner’s vocal intonations making an otherwise serious issue sound near-hilarious.
With the chaos of life, “Distracted” is Bruner’s attempt at, if not making sense of it all, distracting himself through music, and the result is beautiful. Some songs are tearjerkers disguised as funky, funny riffs, and others present themselves as they are, but are contextualized by the loss of artists like Mac Miller who helped create them. As a whole, however, “Distracted” is a sharp and ironically focused effort, which altogether transports the listener away to a world of psychedelia, funky basses and dreamy synths, all much different from the chaotic nature of the real world.
