Having delivered two acclaimed records of bluesy, retro garage rock indebted to T. Rex and Jon Spencer, the Virginian singer and songwriter Benjamin Booker seemed to disappear off the face of the Earth after 2017’s “Witness“. Nearly eight years later, he returns with a radically different sounding effort his third album, “Lower” is out January 24th, 2025 and available for pre-order on vinyl. I co-produced this record with the masterful Kenny Segal and I am beyond happy to share it with you. “Lwa In the Trailer Park,” off the upcoming “Lower“, marks a big departure from the blues-punk of Booker’s first two celebrated albums
The video for “LWA In The Trailer Park” is out now made in collaboration with nofilmprojects.
It’s out January 24th on Booker’s new label, Fire Next Time Records. Booker co-produced his album with Kenny Segal, who will join the singer on a North American tour next year.
“Lower’s” lead single is “Lwa in the Trailer Park,” and it comes with a black-and-white music video that you can watch below. “I felt particularly connected to Paul Schrader’s work making this album,” Booker said of his visual in a press statement. “Like several of his movies, I wanted to look at a troubled character on the edge, reaching for transcendence. Now that I’m working on a series of connected videos, Schrader has had an influence in that arena as well, along with Jean-Pierre Melville’s Le Samouraï and Charles Burnett’s Killer of Sheep.”
Benjamin Booker is a musician reared in the swampy Floridian DIY scene whose primary inspirations are blues god Blind Willie Johnson and glam figurehead T. Rex, who plays a smartly lyrical blend of soulful garage rock and noisy art pop. Booker dropped his third album at the top of 2025, “Lower”, featuring its distortion-heavy single and opening track “Black Opps.” Cleverly, Booker compares the Black experience of being forever paranoid and living under a microscope (“They’ll kill you while you sleep”) to the willful trauma of playing the newest Call of Duty game. “Can you even call yourself a man if you haven’t helped this country control global politics through hidden acts of violence while eating pizza rolls?” Booker has said upon the album’s release. “When my virtual country calls me to serve, I’m there.”
Last year, Booker featured on “Baby Steps,” a cut from Billy Woods and Kenny Segal’s “Maps“. He also featured on Armand Hammer’s “Doves,” co-producing the nearly nine-minute track with Segal.
The Fat Angel Sings 