In the end, they opted for Better Dreaming, but their pro-democracy and anti-authoritarian stance is evident throughout the record. The music, however, is anything but trash.
Autocracy, hatred, persecution – the world in 2025 isn’t a happy place. It wouldn’t have been much of a challenge to make a dark, hopeless record that reflects these bleak times, but Tune-Yards never take the path of least resistance. On Better Dreaming, they focus on a brighter future instead, one where we can all thrive both as individuals and as a collective. In keeping with this agenda, the music is energising and joyful, while acknowledging the roadblocks up ahead.
Merrill Garbus and long-time collaborator/bassist/husband Nate Brenner’s projects have always been adventurous and uncompromising, showing an eclecticism that draws from African, folk, electronic, rap and even classical music. Yet the duo’s music is still essentially pop, just not of the predictable kind. Thanks to all their influences, you can never tell what they’re about to pull out of the bag – hand claps, tambourine, ukulele – but they always find a way to make all the puzzle pieces click together. And they do it so smoothly you may even forget their songs are carefully constructed. Like a Matisse painting – it doesn’t occur to you that it’s just so many brushstrokes. Unconventional and innovative, yet easy on the eye. Replace ‘eye’ with ‘ear’, and you’ve captured the essence of the Oakland-based act.
Despite the potential of some of their songs to cross over into the mainstream – the buoyant, upbeat “Look at Your Hands” from 2018’s I can feel you creeping into my private life and “hold yourself”, a catchy hymn to self-empowerment off 2021’s sketchy., spring to mind – Garbus and Brenner have enjoyed little chart success to date. Nikki Nack, released in 2014, peaked at #27 on the Billboard 200 and remains their highest-charting record. Given that today’s charts are ruled by solo artists with instantly accessible sound, Better Dreaming, Tune-Yards’ sixth LP, may not top that, but it will definitely make you get up and dance.
Full of pulsating beats and hypnotic grooves, the album is bursting with an energy and joy that is impossible to resist. Built around drum looping and rhythm building, the tracks are constructed layer by layer, with frequent changes in tempo and dynamics, until they end up as complex, polyrhythmic beasts, erupting into a chaotic yet beautiful crescendo more often than not. Even slower jams are unrelenting as they gradually grow into a turbulent wall of sound, with Garbus’ vocal performance mirroring each song’s development.
On opener “Heartbreak” she starts out in a comfortable mid-range, then raises the pitch and delivers the chorus with the intensity of Aretha Franklin, only to reach heights typically scaled by operatic sopranos. Elsewhere, she speak-sings, raps, switches from smooth to assertive and, on album closer “Sanctuary”, delivers a tour-de-force performance, going from a recital à la Laurie Anderson to the ferocious outburst of a punk rocker. “This is where you sing yourself into existence,” the lyrics go, and she certainly does. It’s a liberating experience.
Throughout the record, you witness Garbus purge herself of the abuse of male authority (“Never Look Back”), shame (“How Big Is the Rainbow”) and self-doubt (“Sanctuary”), and you feel compelled to follow suit and get rid of whatever demons are lodged deep within you. They may well be similar to the ones Garbus is fighting in what feels like a Lynchian nightmare sequence on the title track: being trapped in a room full of harpies, screeching as they’re getting ready to pounce and snatch her soul. Threatened, she lets rip, resembling Faith No More’s Mike Patton at his most unhinged, and eventually escapes, waking up, mostly unharmed, to calm, peaceful music. “Dreaming that I might have a choice / And that I’d choose much better”, she sings, suggesting we all have to keep going and strive to improve, no matter the hardships.
The rest of the album is just as life-affirming, and much less musically unsettling, at times even funny and light-hearted. “Limelight”, for instance, prominently features the happy laughter of the duo’s three-year-old, but each song has some treat to offer, whether it’s dubbed snares (“Heartbreak”), a piano improvisation chopped up and rearranged (“Suspended”) or Haitian percussion (“How Big Is the Rainbow”).
Ever since 2009’s lo-fi debut Bird-Brains, every Tune-Yards album has offered raw excitement. Better Dreaming does too, and it may just be their most uplifting and inspiring work to boot. Give it a listen – you’ll be dreaming better.
