"Lwa in the Trailer Park" Released: October 16, 2024
"Same Kind of Lonely" Released: December 12, 2024
Lower is the third studio album by American musician and singer-songwriter Benjamin Booker.[1] It was released on January 24, 2025, by Fire Next Time Records and Thirty Tigers,[2][3] and features the singles, "Lwa in the Trailer Park" and "Same Kind of Lonely". Co-produced with record producer Kenny Segal, it is Booker's debut release on Fire Next Time and his first coproduction effort among his solo projects.[4][5]
Lower is Booker's first album in seven years, following his 2017 album Witness. It consists of eleven tracks ranging between two and six minutes each with a total runtime of approximately forty-two minutes. Incorporating elements of lo-fi, dream pop, ambientindie rock, noise pop, and hip-hop,[1] it centers on themes such as alcoholism and homelessness.[6] The album's first single, "Lwa in the Trailer Park", was released on October 16, 2024.[7][8] The second single, "Same Kind of Lonely", was released on December 12, 2024, with a music video co-directed by Booker and Gerry Cisneros.[5]
Rachel Leong of Clash compared the album with Booker's self-titled balladrock-influenced debut album, and his Americana and garage rock-inspired second album, Witness, stating that Lower is "certainly a culmination of the two." Clash rated the album eight out of ten,[1] the same as Under the Radar, which noted in its review of the album, "Evidencing both a maturity and an ability to reign in the chaos when it's warranted, makes for an exciting listen from an artist at the height of their powers while also fully in control of them."[2]
Pitchfork gave it a rating of 8.0 out of ten, remarking "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."[6] John Lennon of PopMatters rated it nine out of ten and commented about how characters depicted by the album, "still grope along, putting on their "walking shoes" and taking steps in a world that cares nothing about them."[9]The Wall Street Journal stated, "The blues-inflected musician's new album fuses well-wrought songs with the hiss and crackle of deliberately distorted production."[10]
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