Everything tends to tilt toward complication: centuries on from the tin-can telephone, we now carry the iPhone in our pockets, the sundial has given way to a smartwatch, and even eyewear can be polarized yet secretly monitor us. Not that technological leaps can’t be dazzling, but recently—and for a good while—everything has felt overblown. We’re forever straining toward what comes next, which can leave the sense that systems must become more tangled to appear advanced. Slippers 08, Madeline Babuka Black’s second album from Los Angeles, returns to me the idea that the future doesn’t have to sound or feel onerous.
Releasing music as Slippers, Babuka Black fashions sharp, jangly pop nuggets that feel both new and familiar. Surf-rock guitar riffs graze beside cucumber-cool vocal harmonies. Timeless laments sit alongside sprightly percussion and a steady kick drum. The music may strike as straightforward, yet it remains lush and intricate. Slippers 08 demonstrates that the past, present, and future can fold into one another at the pace of a great pop song.
Part of what makes Slippers 08 feel so refreshing is how little it seems intent on proving itself. Contemporary indie rock often arrives swathed in conceptual frames, genre-blending experiments, or hyper-detailed production. Albums can seem obligated to declare their ambition. Slippers operates in the opposite direction. The songs on Slippers 08 don’t trumpet their sophistication; they disclose it gradually, through bubblegum melodies, sidewalk-chalk textures, and winsome repetition. What first sounds effortless turns out to be carefully studied, tracing a line from early Beatles and Beach Boys records to later jangly-pop torchbearers like the Pastels.
That tension between immediacy and craft threads through the album. The guitars are bright and lucid, drawing on decades of power pop and garage rock without becoming mired in nostalgia. Her arrangements feel economical yet never spare. Every component has a function. A vocal harmony lifts a chorus exactly when it needs lift. A guitar line winds around a melody before quietly dissolving. The record’s pleasures aren’t usually overwhelming, but they endure.
Babuka Black has not only logged a substantial career in music—now performing with Le Pain and having previously been part of Yucky Duster, Beverly, and Gobbinjr—but she is also studying animation at the California Institute of the Arts. She cites Cartoon Network, rooted in her hometown of Atlanta, as one source of inspiration.
“They always had a lot of indie scenes in that city,” she has noted. “I recall a Powerpuff Girls music compilation that included Devo, Apples In Stereo, and Shonen Knife. My dad bought it for me, and I just got hooked.” Those influences are easy to hear. What’s equally clear is how Babuka Black’s songwriting channels the sly wit of those cherished cartoons—the sensation of watching a kids’ show when a shard of adult wisdom slips through the dialogue.
Slippers 08 becomes so addictive because Babuka Black is adept at embedding deeper emotions within infectious melodies. I keep replaying these short, sugar-sweet pieces not only because they resemble dry, sugary cereal, but because I become so absorbed that I nearly miss the darker linguistic alchemy she’s weaving beneath the surface.
“When I said that I wanted you / I meant out of my life,” Babuka Black opens the buoyant “Wants For Everyone,” turning a fond sentiment into something freeing and wry. “When I said that I needed you,” she continues, “I was out of my mind.” The songwriter has a knack for twisting the stakes of a line with quiet ease. “Spend all your time / What you get back you won’t know,” she softly sings at the outset of the saccharine, Beatles-esque ballad “Until You Can’t Give Up On Me.” The seemingly romantic chorus (“I will wait for you because the ground gave up on me”) almost distracts from those foreboding opening lines. The track is cosmic and kaleidoscopic, yet its playfulness is fueled by mature emotion.
What’s most striking is the way Babuka Black treats familiarity. Much of Slippers 08 is built from recognizable materials: ringing guitars, understated rhythms, melodies that feel already half-remembered. Yet Slippers treats these sounds as living tools rather than museum pieces. The result is music that acknowledges the past without becoming beholden to it. The record doesn’t revive an older style so much as it continues a conversation that never fully ended.
Slippers 08 continues to affirm that pop can be a remedy for monotony. “I wake up another Sunday morning / I still never know what to do,” she sings over languid guitar strums and tumbling drums. The percussion feels lightly caffeinated by tambourine accents. Maybe it’s her airy voice, or the casual bounce of these tunes, but Slippers 08 makes life’s ambiguities feel like a hand-drawn card—gently, sentimentally nudging you to keep moving forward. The small, everyday moments—the mindless hobby of aromatherapy, misplacing your wallet and keys, sinking back beneath the sheets—acquire a peculiar, quiet significance, a subtle proof that life continues.
Slippers 08 arrives June 5 via Perennial.
Other albums of note this week:
Vince Staples’ Cry Baby
Zoh Amba’s Eyes Full
Converge’s Hum Of Hurt
Modest Mouse’s An Eraser And A Maze
Death Cab For Cutie’s I Built You A Tower
Hammok’s When Does This Place Become Our Scene
Lizzo’s Bitch
Bedouine’s Neon Summer Skin
of Montreal’s aethermead
Widowspeak’s Roses
DJ Seinfeld’s If This Is It
horsegiirL’s NATURE IS HEALING
Slift’s Fantasia
Protect’s Slimdude2003 Mixtape
SIIICKBRAIN’s HOUNDSTOOTH
Jeff Goldblum & The Mildred Snitzer Orchestra’s Night Blooms
Malcolm Todd’s Do That Again
Belushi Speed Ball’s Toxic Waste Was Everywhere In The ’80s
Ella Hunt’s Blindspot
Thomas Bangalter’s Mirage – Ballet For 16 Dancers (1-8)
The Creem’s A Taste Of Cherry
Overpass’ Elsewhere, Always
Jared Mattson & Ruban Nielson’s FEAR
zzzahara’s Distant Lands
Laura Misch’s Lithic
Joe Holmes’ Joe Holmes
Brockhoff’s Easy Peeler
The Tomoyuki Trio’s High Oxygen Blood
Yorghaki’s Antes de Que Sea Tarde
August Burns Red’s Season Of Surrender
Normans’ Faust Demonica
A.A. Williams’ Solstice
Dorian Electra’s Dorian Electra
Blood Incantation’s Announce All Gates Open (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
Bella White’s A Sign In The Weather
Pleasure Systems’ Leave It In The Sand
Paul Chamber Orchestra’s Prokofiev Re-Imagined
The Red Clay Strays’ Grateful
The Handover’s New Old Medicine
Tender’s Where The Waves Break
Josh Ottum’s Yellowband
John R. Miller’s The Great Unknowing
100 Demons’ Embrace The Black Light
SHINee’s Atmos Mini Album
Booker Stardrum & Evan Shornstein’s OOPS!
WHO SHOT SCOTT’s Hairy
Sandscape’s Phenomenology
Satya’s Yellow House
Lee “Scratch” Perry & Mouse On Mars’ Spatial, No Problem
Machinedrum’s BL00MS Mini Album
Bye Parula’s Something Out Of Nothing
Poppy Ackroyd’s Liminal
Lukka’s Wendekind
Liz Lawrence’s Vespers
Jalen Ngonda’s Doctrine Of Love
Any Young Mechanic’s The Modern Shoe Is Ruining The Foot
Benny Bleu’s When I Am A Fossil
Rosa Walton’s Tell Me It’s A Dream
Midrift’s Silhouette
Caleb Caudle’s Heavy Thrill
Deer Tick’s Coin-O-Matic
Mekons’ Horrorble (Mekons Vs Tony Maimone In Dub Conference)
Sylvain Chauveau’s The Complexity Of The Simple
Massimiliano Pagliara’s Selected Unreleased Works
Tara Clerkin Trio’s Somewhere Good
Tyler Sabbag’s Novella
Les Big Byrd’s Ruin Everything
Sierra Ferrell’s Live At Third Man Records
Beatrice M.’s Sinking
Seahaven’s Seahaven
Niall Horan’s Dinner Party
Sharada Shashidhar’s A Foot On The Ground
The Huntress And The Holder Of Hands’ Babylon
Barry Manilow’s What A Time
Various Artists’ Next Wave Acid Punx TROIS
Futurebirds’ Far Out Country
Haylie Davis’ Wandering Star
Vansire’s Taking Solace
Deaf Star’s Sunset Overdrive
Fightmaster’s Tolerance
Evergrey’s Architects Of A New Weave
Guilt Trip’s Armour Of Angels
Sparklmami’s In This Body
INAYAH’s Therapy Wasn’t Enough
Christopher Ardra’s Saw It In A Dream
Dwarves’ JENKEM
Bad Stuff’s Bad Stuff
Purbayan Chatterjee & Mark Lettieri’s Feathered Creatures
Evanescence’s Sanctuary
Jo Dee Messina’s Bridges
Oh Hiroshima’s And The Dead Tree Gives No Shelter
The Beaches’ No Hard Feelings (Deluxe)
Clock DVA’s Thirst (45th Anniversary Edition)
Fitz And The Tantrums’ Man On The Moon (The Galaxy Edition)
Attorneys General’s Live At Ftarri, Tokyo (With Tetuzi Akiyama And Elico Suzuki), Live At Pan-Pan, Birmingham (With Mark Sanders And Mark Hanslip), & Live At Horse Hospital, London (with Tara Cunningham, Mike O’Malley, And Alex McKenzie)
Electric Guest’s 10K (Deluxe)
Oscar Farrell’s Birds Fly In EP
daresay’s daresay EP
Terra Twin’s Scumbag EP
Beren’s Exuberance EP
Fucked Up’s Grass Can Move Stones Part 2: Year Of The Monkey EP
Charlotte MacInnes’s Highwater EP
mcgwn’s I’M IN THE LIGHT HEARING SYMPHONIES EP
Tig3r Lewis’s Mr. Right Now EP
Big Special’s O’JOY! EP
leetham’s Kink EP
Eilish Constance’s Singing For Fun EP
Isabel LaRosa’s Promising Young Woman EP
Soul Exchange’s Slow Descent EP
MEOVV’s Bite Now EP
