Bartees Strange – Horror

Label: 4AD
Released: 14th February 2025

Bartees Strange is your favourite producer’s favourite producer, adding credits on Bleachers’ last album and an upcoming Lucy Dacus LP to his increasingly exciting portfolio. On his latest album, ‘Horror’, he delves into his own history to create an album that winds beautifully through genre, light and shade, and nuanced beauty.

Broadly working chronologically through his life, Bartees Strange pays tribute to all his influences, whether that’s musical, familial, or historical. Opener ‘Too Much’ eases you into the depths of Bartees’ mind, creating a soulful folk palette that explodes into ‘Hit It Quit It’, which sees him create jarring moments of ominousness befitting the album’s title. The eminently 1970s-feel of the first part of the album diverts into needy indie-rock single ‘Wants Needs’, before stepping into a dirty basement rave in deep house anthem ‘Lovers’. By the time clawhammer country closer ‘Backseat Banton’ fades out, Bartees has taken moments of folk-rock in ‘Sober’, Andre 3000-esque rap in ‘Norf Gun’, and heartbreaking RnB in ‘17’ to create an album that somehow stays unified despite the diverse breadth of sonics that he pulls from.

Lyrically, it’s an album that couldn’t be more important, discussing the ever-present dangers of being queer and Black in a regressive American political scene. ‘Horror’ is all about that latent fear that you’re never really at home in your birth nation, most eloquently summed up in ‘Baltimore’, a song all about trying to find a place safe enough ‘to raise a few Black kids’. More importantly, though, hope radiates across the record, celebrating the importance of family, community, and determination to write your own story.

It’s always good to get an album of the year contender in early doors, and ‘Horror’ is just that. Expertly crafted and perfectly considered: this is music at its best.