Drunk
A 23-track odyssey of liquid basslines, airy falsettos, and hazy synths. Playful, anxious, and deeply human late-night neo-soul.
A 23-track odyssey of liquid basslines, airy falsettos, and hazy synths. Playful, anxious, and deeply human late-night neo-soul.
Creative peak
Six-string basslines bubble like seltzer water through a haze of cheap weed and late-night television, locking down the exact point where virtuoso jazz fusion becomes bedroom comedy. After years of playing the brilliant sideman, this is the moment those hyper-speed fingers finally found their perfect, wobbling orbit. The music feels like wandering into a convenience store at three in the morning, your head spinning with beautiful, anxious falsettos while yacht-rock legends hum in the freezer aisle. It is a warm, deeply eccentric masterpiece of soft-focus funk that turns everyday dread into something you can comfortably drift away on.
The songwriting plunges into a deeply existential space, transforming mundane anxieties and late-night dread into vulnerable, searching confessionals that anchor the record's dizzying musical shifts.
Broadly welcomed as a warm and eccentric offering, the album was praised by critics for its hypnotic, funk-fueled soul and lighthearted, unpretentious charm. While its sprawling structure and brief vignettes struck some as wonderfully lopsided, reviewers generally admired how the record effortlessly presents a singular and relatable musical vision.
“If your sense of humour is roughly in line with his, you too will probably walk away reasonably satisfied. Anyone who’s been impressed by Thundercat’s freaked deftness in more emotionally nuanced contexts, however, will likely find themselves nonplussed”Read review
“As out-there as it can be, is an album totally high on its own unique ideas”Read review
“Like an elegantly packaged bag of sour candy, it’s ornate business on the outside and bittersweet youthful abandon within”
“With Drunk, Thundercat has delivered a fascinatingly scattershot series of song fragments, snippets, and ideas perfectly suited to the increasingly limited, equally fragmented attention spans of modern listeners”Read review
“Mesmeric and funk-fuelled”Read review
“The bass virtuoso and guests prowl through instrumental genius and juvenile jokes”Read review
“If there’s one man who could make a silly album sound this good, it’s Stephen Bruner”Read review
“A lopsided wonderland of stoned soul”Read review
“You can call Drunk yacht rock but only if the yacht in question can fly straight to the Andromeda Galaxy”Read review
“The third album from bassist/songwriter Thundercat is whimsical and somber, funny and meaningful, sometimes all at once. Drunk’s oddball soul confronts the challenge of just trying to live life”Read review
“Additional guests Kendrick, Pharrell, and Wiz Khalifa add to the star power, but the main attraction is Bruner’s singular combination of tremulous yet fluid bass and aching falsetto”Read review
“On Drunk’s numerous vignettes, Bruner presents his extensive musical interests in an effortlessly relatable style”Read review
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