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- Summary: The third full-length release from New Orleans-based singer-songwriter Benjamin Booker was co-produced with Kenny Segal.
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- Record Label: Fire Next Time Records
- Genre(s): Pop/Rock
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Score distribution:
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Positive: 9 out of 9
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Mixed: 0 out of 9
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Negative: 0 out of 9
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Feb 10, 2025The inevitability of failure in these songs and others drags the listener lower, achingly feeling for a bottom sinking deeper and deeper. Booker, though, is no nihilist, and hope sneaks into his songs despite the overwhelming odds.
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MojoJan 21, 2025Booker has relocated to a more contemporary - and sonically speaking, far more interesting - place here. [Feb 2025, p.82]
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Record CollectorJan 21, 2025This is a bold, powerful and brilliant reinvention. [Jan 2025, p.103]
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Jan 22, 2025LOWER is a profoundly personal outing that gathers Booker’s influences and life experiences together and filters them through a psychedelic lens to emerge with chaotic arrangements that act as the perfect canvas for Booker’s open conversation about feelings most would try to hide.
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Jan 27, 2025Segal comes from underground hip-hop and Booker from retro-leaning rock’n’roll, but LOWER doesn’t sound like any of those genres’ past collisions. Instead, it takes the basic textures of rap rock—boom-bap beats, Deftones’ icy ambiance, the corroded shredding of “She Watch Channel Zero?!”—and fashions them into a new strain of beat-centric grunge.
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Feb 3, 2025One can't help but admire Booker's big swings, and when they are this compelling, everything else becomes a moot point.
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UncutJan 21, 2025Lower fused dream-pop, experimental hip-hop, indie sludge and illbient, with texture and production effects crucial. ... Best are the wonky blues-hop of "Pompeii Statues" and "Hope For The Night Time", which suggests the raspy-voiced Booker joining a lo-fi Mercury Rev on Spacebomb. [Feb 2025, p.33]