It’s not lost on anyone that the past few years have been rough, both in and outside of the music world. Life has been an especially unpredictable rollercoaster for Sarah Tudzin, the resourceful lead of the self-described “tenderpunk” band illuminati hotties. Following her mother’s passing and an escape from record label malfeasance in 2020, the longtime sound engineer made her incredible third album, 2021’s Let Me Do One More, launching her into greater recognition in the indie rock realm. Along with producing Weyes Blood’s And In the Darkness, Hearts Aglow, Eliza McLamb’s Going Through It and boygenius’ the record, the latter of which nabbed multiple Grammy wins, Tudzin married musician Maddie Ross last year.
Amid these major professional wins and intense personal shifts, Tudzin shaped her latest output POWER in Joshua Tree, going off-the-grid and burrowing herself into her own work to better process what she’s had to endure. That concentration and immersion into her craft is evident across the album’s breezy 13 tracks, as Tudzin sings about reclaiming what’s been lost and embracing what’s been discovered during this period of disorientation. But instead of amplifying the emotional extremes of her circumstances through her usual cathartic, shout-along choruses, Tudzin modulates everything down to a slightly gentler, mellower frequency.
Worry not, POWER still provides plenty of upbeat earworms, but there’s a clear pivot energy-wise. Tudzin’s pleasant cooing is more prominent here than the roaring squeal-yelp she performed on bangers like “MMMOOOAAAAAYAYA” and “Pool Hopping.” The guitars are less distorted and crunchy, the drums are cleaner and the overall tonal scope of the album seems driven less by righteous anger and more by melancholy. The desert can do that to you.
Although there aren’t as many compellingly eruptive hooks on POWER as there are on illuminati hotties’ former efforts, what has remained intact is Tudzin’s lyrical ingenuity and reliable technical prowess. She’s always been good at articulating the bittersweet nuances of her experiences and observations by marrying thoughtful, layered production with simple yet striking turns of phrase. “You’re twisted like an ampersand” and “Takes gumption to be brave and empathic” are two lines I think about constantly.
One of the best examples of that cohesion between style and substance on POWER is “Falling in Love with Someone Better,” a bittersweet ode to both Tudzin’s wife and mom. Over a buoyant-turned-rousing instrumental, Tudzin illustrates the ebb and flow of a loving relationship with stunning clarity (“She’s pulling each word out of me like a splinter”) while lamenting not being able to share it with her mother (“I wish that you had met her”). That kind of vulnerability gets an even more candid spotlight on the playful “I Would Like, Still Love You,” where Tudzin expresses her romantic commitment to Ross by acknowledging that she’d still love her partner even if she burned her house down or ignored her. Dark, sure, but the song’s lightweight percussion gives it a touch of winking humor, twisting it into an accessible yet honest window into how emotionally and psychologically consuming being in love can be.
Though there are multiple tracks dedicated to Ross—the aforementioned songs plus the sweet “Throw (Life Raft)” and endearing “Sleeping In”—and Tudzin’s mother—the brief but moving closer “Everything Changes”—POWER is not an album entirely about love or loss. Most of the record finds Tudzin detailing other things that have also empowered or drained her.
On the opener “Can’t Be Still,” for example, Tudzin cleverly illustrates grappling with ADHD burnout, admitting her absent-mindedness (“I triple book my Saturdays”) while desiring a need for stimuli to quell her anxieties. As a fellow neurodivergent creative, the struggle is real. The track’s more fiery companion “Didn’t” gives us the flipside of that struggle, with Tudzin and featured artist Cavetown delivering casual, plain-spoken rejections against systems that aren’t wired for them but demand that they ought to be. In this day and age, where we are forced to prioritize labor as part of our survival, laziness can, in fact, be a virtue, not an inhibition. Tudzin’s recognition of that makes “Didn’t” one of the album’s most resonant songs.
“Didn’t” and the groovy “YSL” are also the closest we get to total ragers on POWER, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing—especially since the album seems to be driven by the philosophy that taking back power requires re-centering oneself to a state of mindfulness. But in doing so, Tudzin reveals the limitations of slowing down, especially considering some of her best work is also her noisiest and busiest. As the album progresses, some tracks begin to blur together, rendering them variations rather than expansions of the same ideas and sounds. “The L” feels like the weaker link to “Can’t Be Still” and “Didn’t”’s anti-grindset trilogy, while “Rot” and “You Are Not Who You Were” are almost identical in their downbeat nature. These are still well-crafted tunes, just not quite as emotionally or sonically hard-hitting.
Part of what made Let Me Do One More so remarkable was Tudzin’s commanding balance between loud and soft, and without that consistent ratio, POWER occasionally stalls into monotony, remaining comfortably static when it should be accumulating emotional momentum for maximum impact. Even the penultimate title track ironically feels lethargic. However, what is here that works still warrants praise, particularly the moments where Tudzin opens up more about her own life and defines the things that bring her joy. And luckily, Tudzin and her collaborators have enough tricks up their sleeves to keep most of POWER afloat.
Sam Rosenberg is a filmmaker and freelance entertainment writer from Los Angeles with bylines in The Daily Beast, Consequence, AltPress and Metacritic. You can find him on Twitter @samiamrosenberg.
