Many career trajectories have seen bracing auteurs soften their edges for pop accessibility or burgeoning songwriters growing more experienced and more complex. Shamir, however, eschews binaries, classifications, or traditional career moulds. He debuted in the world of disco and dance-pop with 2015’s Rachet, before jumping between lo-fi indie rock, country, R&B, and industrial rock at a steady clip, delivering eight albums over the past eight years.
Increasingly, albums are often talked about in terms of eras, as if each work is meant to stand as a unique world unto itself. However, in the context of his prolific rush of creativity, Shamir’s ninth album, Homo Anxietatem, feels less like a new artistic frontier, but instead, a warm welcome back. After the spiked industrial edge to his 2022 album, Heterosexuality, Homo Anxietatem often acts as a return to the melodic indie fusions of his 2020 self-titled record, with opener “Oversized Sweater” playing with the colour-saturated pop rock of the 2000s. Similarly, “The Beginning” delivers its hooks with soaring abandon, soaking them in sugary guitars and turntable scratches. It feels almost like a pastiche of the soundtrack to every early 2000s coming-of-age movie.
Much of the album plays with variations of this mould, letting Shamir’s singular vocal talents shine above the fuzzy indie rock and sharply-written pop hooks. Tracks like “Wandering Through” and “Without You” bounce, bloom and soar, while “Our Song” and “Appetizer” feel more lean and ragged, weaving a spiked edge into the record’s largely bright timbre. However, Shamir also makes room for an understated acoustic arrangement on “Calloused,” dark, churning rock guitars on “Crime” and “Obsession,” and a raw one-take sliding blues track with the closer: “The Devil Said The Blues Is All I’ll Know.”
Thematically, the album’s title – literally translated to “Anxious Man”一feels especially pertinent. The lyrics to “Oversized Sweater” speak of Shamir retreating into the warmth of his sweater like a security blanket, and in some ways, the brighter tracks feel like it serves the same purpose; a retreat from heartache and anxiety into rosy golden-hued memory. In contrast, Shamir’s lyrics are dark and downcast, exploring the grim realities of wandering through life toward an uncertain future.
Homo Anxietatum lives in daily moments of pain and struggle, with “Without You” reflecting on climate anxiety and “Crime” painting a portrait of a bedridden depressive episode. Elsewhere, “Our Song” explores the ache of hearing a song that reminds you of a lost love and “Obsession” deals with the seductive lie of fame: “And I'm crawling out of a bleak future / And it's much better just to be a loser.” Scars, blood, and intrusive thoughts colour Shamir’s poeticisms, but the ultimate hurt seems to be in the daily numbing lull of anxiety and depression. Shamir confesses on the closing track, “I can't be happy / But I can't hurt / I don't carry / What I subvert / I'm just stuck in my skin / And the only way out within / The Devil said I'll always have the blues.”
The result is an album that feels like a conscious movement against upheaval and anxiety. Shamir settles into the familiarity of gleaming indie-pop arrangements and sweet starbursts of melody, all while hints of darkness bleed through the margins. While not a startling stylistic reinvention, the album does feel like a rewarding artistic waypoint from an exceedingly consistent singer and songwriter. Whether he’s playing the blues or playing the pop star, Shamir is moving, magnetic, and sports one of the most immaculate voices in the indie genre. That alone is worth celebrating.
