In so many ways, Thundercat’s music has always exploded with color. Often, his fingers blaze across the fretboard of his bass guitar, leaving explosions of notes in their wake. Meanwhile, his albums consist of multiple musical genres exploding against one another like popcorn kernels under a pot lid. Starting with his solo debut, 2011’s The Golden Age of Apocalypse, Thundercat (Stephen Bruner) has rifled through classic soul, progressive soul, jazz fusion, funk, hip-hop, yacht rock, pop, and electronic like someone madly yanking outfits from different drawers and tossing them all over the room. He even dresses in explosively loud outfits, with bright colors clashing in a brilliant cacophony.
That said, Thundercat—who first emerged as a latter-day member of the legendary thrashcore outfit Suicidal Tendencies before going on to work with Erykah Badu, Kendrick Lamar, Flying Lotus, and Kamasi Washington—has long demonstrated an equally strong penchant for graceful sounds. His entire career is a testament to the fact that a musician can be a flashy gunslinger on their instrument while also possessing a feather-light touch. No matter what vibe a particular song called for, Bruner approached his basslines as if he were aspiring to beauty in some way. Lamar’s landmark album To Pimp a Butterfly, for example, could not have conveyed the same power and depth without Bruner’s presence.
Nevertheless, on his first three albums, Bruner reveled in chaos, swerving all over the stylistic map as if giving listeners whiplash were the whole point. By 2020’s It Is What It Is, however, Bruner had quite literally settled into a groove. With his prodigious instrumental chops serving a newfound sense of flow, he showed the world just how soulful a Thundercat album could be. It was as if he had just discovered that music doesn’t have to be less engaging just because it’s smooth. On the contrary, by restraining his urge to hurl the kitchen sink at us with every song transition, Bruner paradoxically unlocked his full range. Unfortunately, he’s taken a step backwards with Distracted, the follow-up to It Is What It Is.
To be clear, Bruner achieves even greater flow this time around. In purely musical terms, Distracted contains hardly a single note that doesn’t glow with beauty. For the most part, the guests on the album only help. Willow Smith, Tame Impala leader Kevin Parker, DOMI and JD Beck, Beck Hansen, A$AP Rocky, and producer Greg Kurstin (Adele, Beyoncé, Paul McCartney) function together as a kind of musical army.
Their weapon of choice? Sounds that beautify everything in their path. Not to be overlooked is Bruner himself, who has gradually evolved into an almost angelic lead-vocal presence. If soul music was just one of many musical affectations he donned in the past, Distracted sees Thundercat plumbing unprecedented depths of soulfulness with his falsetto.
For a stretch of at least a half-dozen songs—including tracks like “Funny Friends” and “I Wish I Didn’t Waste Your Time”—Bruner, Kurstin, and the rest of the cast create a mood so serene you may find yourself swooning with emotion, maybe even tears. As all manner of radiant flourishes shimmer between your ears, airy melodies float against luscious chord progressions. In the gentle reprise of “Anakin Learns His Fate”, Kurstin’s Fender Rhodes piano, synth swells, and a gentle electronic beat occupy the foreground like golden sunlight on the evaporating dew of Bruner singing so softly in the background he might as well be a ghost.
Elsewhere, “What Is Left to Say” lands on the perfect balance between classic soul music, yacht rock, and the orchestral pop of the 1950s. From song to song, the album is rife with moments of arresting power like these, which makes it all the more tragic and frustrating that Thundercat can’t resist the urge to deface the music with his unrelentingly sophomoric sense of humor. Two particularly coarse moments stand out. In “She Knows Too Much”, the late Mac Miller deadpans, “tell me what I gotta do to get my dick sucked” from the grave. One track later, Lil Yachty addresses a lover he’s pursuing with “bitch, stop acting like you got a real job”.
Both Miller and Yachty wax indulgent in the same mindless hedonism that’s eaten away at hip-hop for decades. Their appearances have the same corrosive effect here, like battery acid thrown recklessly onto a work of fine art. The worst example, however, comes from Bruner, on the Kevin Parker vehicle “No More Lies”. Driven by the now-familiar keyboard puffs that have defined Tame Impala’s music for over a decade—only with jazz-lazed synth chords that fall like gusts of rain—the song ends with a monologue from Bruner. Here, Bruner allows us to eavesdrop on his side of a conversation between him and a romantic partner.
“My therapist told me,” he says, “that I should tell you the truth, but you’re still angry. So sometimes I feel like I still should’ve lied. I tell you the truth because I care, but I also lie to you because I care. If I tell you the truth, I guess I can sleep better at night, but then it looks like I don’t care because I’m telling you the truth.” He even goes further, saying, “If it seems like I don’t care, it doesn’t mean I don’t care. It just looks like I don’t care. Because my emotions have been sanded off.”
Unsurprisingly, Thundercat and Parker paint a captivating scene, one that’s rife with dramatic tension. Moreover, Bruner deserves credit for being vulnerable enough to open the door on a moment like this, even if he is just play-acting for musical gain. He may come across as an overgrown child attempting to have an adult conversation, but who among us doesn’t sound like one when hashing it out and trying to navigate misunderstandings with a partner? Credit where due, Bruner hits the bullseye on one of the central conundrums at the heart of all human relationships: what do we share with the people we love versus what we choose to keep to ourselves?
As Thundercat speaks, his earnestness and lack of guard are palpable, but then, as if right on cue, Bruner kills the mood, bursting into a snide chuckle as the music abruptly halts. He closes the song with an off-handed “I live in L.A., sweetie. What do you expect?” Then he laughs even harder, even adding a distortion effect to the laughter to make it more grating. In an instant, Bruner transforms from a sincere, if befuddled lover to a cold, dismissive prick—and manages to take a beautiful piece of music down with him.
Again, there isn’t a person on earth who hasn’t come off this way, or at the very least done a clumsy job of reconciling between caring about a person’s feelings and stomping all over them. If we’re being honest with ourselves, we all have the capacity to be callous once we’ve checked out of a relationship and find ourselves weaponizing the emotional shut-down Bruner describes.
However, his cavalier attitude leaves a bad taste where it doesn’t belong. Why he would go out of his way to paint himself in such an unflattering light speaks to the larger issue that continues to plague his music: the guy can’t keep a straight face through one of his own records.
The Distracted cover art depicts Thundercat biting his collar, partially obscuring a facial expression that could be discomfort but could also be a shit-eating grin. That uncertainty may work as an album cover, but it wreaks havoc on the music. If, for argument’s sake, we want to give Bruner the benefit of the doubt and interpret “No More Lies” as an example of playing a role the same way an actor plays a character onscreen, it’s as if the music came from a completely different film. For all of Kurstin’s gifts, one wishes a strong-willed producer would take a firm stance and push Thundercat to divide his serious and silly sides into two separate records.
Until then, he continues to flail between two emotional states that detract from each other. “Feelings are like children in a car,” Bruner sings on “What Is Left to Say”. The problem here is that Bruner has stuck us in the backseat, right in the awkward middle spot between two irreconcilable temperaments. With both “feelings” speaking loudly at the same time, we can’t hear what either one of them has to say until, finally, they just start to grate. If an artist can’t go an entire song with their guard down, it not only makes for a jarring experience but also makes it hard for the listener to trust that the artist won’t ruin the mood at any time without warning.
Thundercat has always been an eccentric figure who’s worn his freak flag on his sleeve. However, as he drags his feet on growing up and refuses to match the maturity level of his own music, he runs the risk of sinking into the role of a sad clown. He and the gorgeous sounds he creates deserve better.