Criticizing bigwigs at the apex of the music industry seemed to come naturally to Illuminati Hotties. But after a few years of relative success as an artist and in-demand engineer, Sarah Tudzin’s spot might not look half bad to those still beneath her in the power structure, treading out of breath in Los Angeles’ sublevel swamp—and the perspective change is messing with her head. A musical Swiss Army knife, she spends her third album as Illuminati Hotties, Power, grappling with the complicated reality of where she’s at these days: basking in year one of marriage, smoking anxiously at The Met at dawn, and realizing her ADHD is productive until it isn’t. Never mind that her credentials earned her an impressive list of musicians on speed dial for Power—Death Cab for Cutie’s Jason McGerr, Jay Som’s Melina Duterte, Ryan Hemsworth—when she needs to sort through life’s mixed bag of humbling privileges and recent grievances before she can go back to taking shots.
Engineering for Boygenius and Weyes Blood during the day and being a self-described “superhuman” musician by night, Tudzin’s relentless lifestyle could make you hyperventilate by proximity alone. “I triple-book my Saturdays, but I pretend my program keeps me from freaking out,” she sings, cross-eyed with stress, on the addictive lead single “Can’t Be Still.” On “The L,” Tudzin admits she can’t help the all-or-nothing grind: “I’m stubborn enough to give it up or give ’em hell.” Three years ago, that looked like cracking jokes and throwing uppercuts on Let Me Do One More to the tune of ricocheting power-pop. But with the gentler indie rock of Power, she forces herself to really, genuinely try to explore the middle ground between hiding under the covers all day and pulling wild all-nighters.
Illuminati Hotties’ knack for earworms remains unshakeable, from the shoegaze-inflected guitars in “Throw (Life Raft)” to the lovesick vocal harmonies of “Sleeping In.” Accenturing those hooks are friends in the business: Cavetown joins her ode to giving up (“Didn’t”) and Speedy Ortiz’s Sadie Dupuis helps tackle mental white noise (“What’s the Fuzz”). Tudzin’s most effortless songwriting on Power, however, cozies up in a softer blend of acoustic guitar-led indie pop reminiscent of the early works of Tegan and Sara. Nursing wounds while simultaneously trying to put her problems to scale, Tudzin writes unpretentious songs that aim straight for the heart (“I Would Like, Still Love You,” “You Are Not Who You Were”) like the enduring hits of So Jealous.
This is also the first collection of songs written after Tudzin’s mother died of cancer. While Power is not a grief album—“I’ll be writing that [one] for the rest of my life now,” Tudzin recently told Rolling Stone—she grapples with the heaviness of mourning frequently and candidly across Power’s tracklist. The doubletime ballads and slow strummers dedicated to her mother could have been paint-by-numbers dedications; instead, she flexes her strengths as a producer. As she sings from a place of resigned despair on “Rot,” Tudzin bolsters an otherwise straightforward acoustic number with percussion and cello. Come threadbare closer “Everything Changes,” she pushes the microphone against her lips so each word scratches through a raspy whisper. “I want to be where you are,” Tudzin quietly pleads to her mother on the title track, “I want to feel your power.” As the song’s drum machine beat and muted keys cast the orange glow of a sunrise, a sense of guiding momentum—faith, even—trickles in.
Navigating the incalculable scope of grief is a lifelong task. On Power, Tudzin knows she’s in the early stages of trudging across it—that the sunshine doesn’t feel as bright as it used to, even if it’s reflecting off a pristine Grammy Award on her shelf. But god, when the angle hits just right and warms her skin, Tudzin notices small details developing into healthier habits: Googling how famous someone is, only to realize it doesn’t matter; letting her laughter spill out loudly; noticing that her wife likes sleeping in, so now she does, too. Learning how to balance the good with the bad is arguably the biggest key to surviving life’s hardest blows. Power doesn’t make it seem easy, but shows Tudzin trying anyway. Consider it her realest power move yet.
