NEW ALBUMS

THUNDERCAT

Distracted BRAINFEEDER

Stephen Bruner returns after six years with more humour, psych-funk and guests.

By Jason Anderson

NEIL KRUG

Thundercat: deft one-liners and goofball references

8/10

“DOES humour belong in music?” a TV reporter once asked Frank Zappa. The musician was sufficiently bemused to use the apocryphal question for an album title. Chances are Stephen Bruner would also answer in the affirmative, even if Apostrophe wasn’t one of his favourite records. Bruner’s fifth album released under the name of Thundercat, Distracted is chockablock with deft one-liners, surreal non sequiturs, wry observations and goofball pop-culture references. In musical terms, he takes just as much delight in stylistic shifts, with Bruner and his trusty bass affably slip-sliding between genres however he sees fit.

All the ideas and quips can arrive at such a clip, it’s somehow reassuring to know it’s enough to crack him up, too. Evidence arrives at the end of “No More Lies”, a collaboration with Tame Impala’s Kevin Parker, one of a typically impressive roster of guest stars that includes Flying Lotus, Beck Hansen, A$AP Rocky, Lil Yachty and The Lemon Twigs. (Mac Miller, the MC whose death in 2018 inspired the heavier vibe of Thundercat’s 2020 album It Is What It Is, also makes a posthumous appearance on “She Knows Too Much”.) Over a woozy yet irresistible psych-funk groove that trumps everything on Tame Impala’s tepid Deadbeat, Thundercat ponders the challenges of both being honest and keeping the lies straight in order to keep a romance afloat. “My therapist told me that I should tell you the truth”, he offers. He later attributes his appearance of indifference to the possibility that “my emotions have been sanded off”, a confession that seemingly jars him too. “I live in LA, sweetie – what do you expect?!” he adds, capping it off with a lusty cackle.

Bruner’s self-deprecating wit is one of many things that have made his music so engaging. And while Distracted bears flickers of Zappa’s more caustic brand of humour, Thundercat ultimately seems less like a modern-day counterpart to the original Mother of Invention than to George Duke, his sunnier former sideman. Over the course of the keyboardist and composer’s four-decade career, Duke freely travelled back and forth across the realms of rock, jazz, funk, R&B and pop with consistently mellifluous results. Bruner has shown a similar aplomb while simultaneously occupying a wide array of niches. How else to describe an enthusiastic fellow traveller for the disparate likes of Suicidal Tendencies, Kendrick Lamar and the costumed cast of hipster kids show Yo Gabba Gabba?