He’s popped up as a guest on albums by the likes of Gorillaz and Kamasi Washington, lent his unique bass guitar sound to artists like Tyler, The Creator and JID, and in 2023 dropped the underrated Tame Impala collab ‘No More Lies’. While he’s kept busy over the past five years, he’s let his solo career take a little bit of a backseat while he worked with a host of interesting artists.
On the 15th of September, however, something shifted. The skies cracked open and Thundercat descended upon us all with two new singles: ‘I Wish I Didn’t Waste Your Time’ and ‘Children Of The Baked Potato’, the latter of which features indie-pop head-turner Remi Wolf.
These two tracks seem to be the first helpings of material from Thundercat’s fifth album, a project that he has spoken openly about before, and while they might not blow the door off of his typical sound or offer up some wild left-turn for listeners to digest, they do provide two smooth additions to Thundercat’s consistently fantastic back catalogue of music.
‘I Wish I Didn’t Waste Your Time’ is, as the title would suggest, the more introspective of the two tracks. Over his signature plucky bass and relaxed synths, Bruner waxes about a failed relationship and how his flaws contributed to its end. While its sound is upbeat, the lyrics are a depressive reflection on how things between him and his partner fell apart. “Nothing feels quite the same / there’s no one else to blame / I guess it’s just all my faults creeping up behind” his trademark falsetto pains in the second verse. It’s a dark listen lyrically, but the production and instrumentation make it easier to stomach.
‘Children Of The Baked Potato’ is the real progressive jazz-fusion banger. In many ways, Remi Wolf is a perfect artist for someone like Thundercat to work with. Both artists are heavily influenced by soul and funk music of decades past, and both have a strong sense of humour that they often stitch directly into their music. It was only a matter of time before the artist behind songs like ‘Quiet On Set!’ worked with a man who writes lyrics like “Sometimes I'd rather be online playing Call of Duty”. As expected, the pairing goes together wonderfully. The track manages to be both wildly energetic and still feel laid-back and effortless. Remi’s unrefined but beautiful voice goes so smoothly with Bruner’s own, and as the two weave together throughout the length of the song, the pairing of these two musical forces begins to feel like even more of an inevitability.
These new tracks from Thundercat are a promising look at what he’s been working on all this time. They aren’t status quo changers, but they are a demonstration of the frankly unbelievable levels of workman-like consistency that Bruner has managed to uphold for all of the near 15 years of his solo career. Let’s just hope that album really is on the way.