“Does humour belong in music?” a TV reporter once asked Frank Zappa. The musician was sufficiently bemused to use the apocryphal question for an album title. Chances are Stephen Bruner would also answer in the affirmative even if Apostrophe wasn’t one of his favourite records. Bruner’s fifth album released under the name of Thundercat, Distracted is chockablock with deft one-liners, surreal non-sequiturs, wry observations and goofball pop-culture references. In musical terms, he takes just as much delight in stylistic shifts, with Bruner and his trusty bass affably slip-sliding between genres however he sees fit.
All the ideas and quips can arrive at such a clip, it’s somehow reassuring to know it’s enough to crack him up, too. Evidence arrives at the end of “No More Lies”, a collaboration with Tame Impala’s Kevin Parker, one of a typically impressive roster of guest stars that includes Flying Lotus, Beck Hansen, A$AP Rocky, Lil Yachty and The Lemon Twigs (Mac Miller, the MC whose death in 2018 inspired the heavier vibe of Thundercat’s 2020 album It Is What It Is, also makes a posthumous appearance on “She Knows Too Much”). Over a woozy yet irresistible psych-funk groove that trumps everything on Tame Impala’s tepid Deadbeat, Thundercat ponders the challenges of both being honest and keeping the lies straight in order to keep a romance afloat. “My therapist told me that I should tell you the truth”, he offers. He later attributes his appearance of indifference to the possibility that “my emotions have been sanded off”, a confession that seemingly jars him too. “I live in LA, sweetie – what do you expect?!” he adds, capping it off with a lusty cackle.
Bruner’s self-deprecating wit is one of many things that have made his music so engaging. And while Distracted bears flickers of Zappa’s more caustic brand of humour, Thundercat ultimately seems less like a modern-day counterpart to the original Mother of Invention than to George Duke, his sunnier former sideman. Over the course of the keyboardist and composer’s four-decade career, Duke freely traveled back and forth across the realms of rock, jazz, funk, R&B and pop with consistently mellifluous results. Bruner has shown a similar aplomb while simultaneously occupying a wide array of niches. How else to describe an enthusiastic fellow traveler for the disparate likes of Suicidal Tendencies, Kendrick Lamar and the costumed cast of hipster kids show Yo Gabba Gabba?
Like It Is What It Is and 2017’s Drunk, Distracted sees its creator knit together airy avant-R&B, Stevie Wonder’s most synth-heavy soul, Beach Boys harmonies, AM Gold pop and the vanguard jazz of his childhood pal Kamasi Washington, all with a low-end foundation that’s one-part Larry Graham to two-parts Jaco Pastorius. All of the music’s potential edges feel softened by the prevailing narcotic haze. While the ecstatic sunshine pop of “What Is Left To Say” and breezy strut of “She Knows Me Too Well” may benefit the most from this liquid, limpid aesthetic, even the features by the guest MCs can feel similarly dazed and mellow. Fittingly, on the burbling almost-party-track “I Did This To Myself”, Lil Yachty delivers a shoutout for those “who sip codeine, not no Red Bull”, a nod to the cough-syrup concoctions that once fueled DJ Screw’s chopped-and-screwed beats, another key component of the Thundercat DNA. Also present and accounted for are the free-associative lyrics in which personal reflections and criticisms intermingle with in-jokes and Star Wars and Star Trek references (“You’re my Uhura”, he croons in “Walking On The Moon” and clearly there could be no higher compliment to a paramour).
For all the good cheer it exudes, Thundercat’s music bristles with anxieties and uncertainties. On Distracted, the grief themes of It Is What It Is intersect with preoccupations about attention deficits and self-reinforcing cycles of negative thinking. Those edgier undercurrents can shift a song’s direction, like when the fusion-y flurry of bass guitar notes upends the initially placid nature of “ADD Through The Roof”.
Such shifts in mood and mode reflect the album’s piecemeal creative process, Thundercat assembling its contents with Adele and Beck producer Greg Kurstin and various conspirators over the last five years. Some of Distracted’s best songs initially arrived in the interim – “No More Lies” was first released as a single in 2023 and the shimmering “I Wish I Didn’t Waste Your Time” in 2025.
Ironically, Distracted may be his most coherent album to date. Less prone to abrupt zigzags than its predecessors, it’s his smoothest as well. Though no song brandishes yacht-rock tropes so flagrantly as Drunk’s “Show You The Way”, he nevertheless enters similar waters with “ThunderWave”, a gorgeous duet with neo-soul singer Willow Smith that brandishes the sheen of ’80s R&B love ballads like Patti Austin and Jeffrey Osborne’s “Baby, Come To Me”. Incongruously named for a Mexican stew, “Pozole” achieves the same delicacy as Bruner fuses Stylistics-calibre Philly soul and pillowy ‘70s soft-rock.
Nevertheless, some of those pesky worries aren’t so easily resolved. Distracted’s affecting closing track, “You Left Without Saying Goodbye” finds Bruner battling his demons and doing all he can to soothe himself (“just breathe, it’s ok”). Thundercat being Thundercat, he takes solace in cracking wise, ending the album with a lewd and left-field joke about a potential side hustle. “Maybe I should start an OnlyFans and show some feet”, Bruner croons over a bed of creamy, cosmic soul gradually dissipating into the ether. Frank would’ve most definitely chuckled at that one.
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