At 41, Thundercat is one of those musicians whose name, or rather whose work, we encounter more often than we realise.
Stephen Lee Bruner, to use his given name, is a bassist, producer, composer and sessions musician from Los Angeles whose prolific collaborations can be hard to keep track of. One may come across him on Kendrick Lamar’s landmark To Pimp a Butterfly (2015), one of the defining albums of the last decade. Or through his long association with the producer Flying Lotus, his most constant creative partner.
One may stumble upon his bass line without immediately realising it, as I did when I heard him laying down that striking groove on the title track of Gorillaz’s 2023 album, Cracker Island. Or encounter him, as I did, on several tracks by Kamasi Washington, the modern master of jazz, on the album Live at 5th Street Dick’s (2005), or the very aptly named Epic (2015).
He’s on Erykah Badu’s New Amerykah Parts One and Two (2008; 2010), where his bass sits perfectly inside the Queen of Neo-Soul’s intertwining grooves. And has recordings with rappers Snoop Dogg, the late Mac Miller, Tyler the Creator.
But it is Thundercat’s solo albums that are the real showcase of his virtuosity. Six years after his last LP, It Is What It Is — an album that carried the grief of losing his close friend Mac Miller — he is now back with a fifth studio record, Distracted, released this month.
The title is not accidental. Thematically, the album carries a scepticism of technological “progress”, especially of the way it has narrowed our collective imaginations instead of expanding them. Thundercat jokes about Star Trek and childhood dreams of space travel, then pivots to the anti-climax of the present times: drones without lasers, phones that only upgrade cameras, innovation reduced to surveillance and scrolling.
This isn’t po-faced litany. The wit is dry, the self-deprecation real, and the music — as ever with this man — absolutely gorgeous.
Distracted opens with Candlelight, a heady piece of fusion where flanged vocals (a lagged and modulated version twinned with the original) and galactic synths share space with his showy bass fingerwork and restless drumming. “Burning at both ends / Fighting the wind / Don’t let your light fade / Watch the light dim / As the wax melts away…” it goes.
The album’s emotional centrepiece arrives early. Track three, She Knows Too Much, features posthumous vocals from Mac Miller, who died aged 26, in 2018. Thundercat’s backing vocals provide the sugar to Miller’s salt, and the bass guitar is splendid throughout. It is a remarkable thing, hearing these two friends together again; bittersweet in the truest sense of the word. Miller was a constant presence in Thundercat’s musical life, and one can feel that loss transmuted into something warm and alive on this track.
The collaborations keep coming, and they are as varied as the artist’s own restless tastes.
This Thing We Call Love with rapper Channel Tres rouses the album with a disco-inflected beat and silky vocals. Funny Friends with A$AP Rocky offers a steady groove that tends towards psychedelia.
ThunderWave with Willow is a mellifluous duet that finally embodies the warm union the album has been quietly building towards, genuinely sappy but too honest to resist. And there is I Did This to Myself with Lil Yachty and Flying Lotus, in which Thundercat locks in so hard on the bass that one can practically see him bopping his head, nimble fingers navigating the frets with intense focus and also seeming ease.
The album is executive-produced by Thundercat and Greg Kurstin (the pop production maestro whose credits range from Adele to Sia, Pink and Foo Fighters), and the pairing works beautifully, giving the record polish without artifice.
From the longing ballad I Wish I Didn’t Waste Your Time to the atmospheric Walking on the Moon, there is much to celebrate in this return. On ADD Through the Roof, bass and keys trade solos in classic call-and-response fashion over a backdrop fit for a smoky, dimly lit lounge. It’s the kind of thing only Thundercat does, making genuinely complex post-genre music sound natural and uncontrived.
Is Distracted a perfect album? Not quite. It occasionally feels like two records in one: a collection of downtempo jazz slow-burners coexisting with a Funkadelic-inspired take on hip-hop and cosmic soul. But perfection was never really Thundercat’s game. What he offers instead is something else that is rare: music that is virtuosic without being cold, emotionally direct without being obvious, and is consistently joyful. Not among the best vocalist there is, his falsetto has deepened into something wiser, funnier and more human.
In an age of endless distraction — the irony is built into the title — Thundercat makes music that is worth paying attention to. Fully, completely, with phone face-down on the table and headphones cranked up. Trust me on this one.
Listen to Sanjoy Narayan’s essential Thundercat playlist here.
(To reach out, email sanjoy.narayan@gmail.com. The views expressed are personal)
