- Perennial
- 2026
Everything seems to gravitate toward complication: centuries later, the tin-can telephone has become the iPhone, the sundial a smartwatch, and glasses polarized, self-recording spyware. Not that technological advancements can't be incredible, but lately, and for quite some time now, everything has felt excessive. We're always straining toward the future, which can create the impression that systems must grow more convoluted to become more sophisticated. Slippers 08, the sophomore album from LA-based musician Madeline Babuka Black, reminds me that the future doesn't have to sound or feel complicated.
Recording as Slippers, Black concocts crunchy jangle-pop gems that feel both fresh and familiar. Surf-rock guitars brush up against cucumber-cool vocal coos. Timeless laments nestle alongside shuffling percussion and steady kick drums. The music can sound simple while remaining lush, nuanced. Slippers 08 proves that the past, present, and future can collapse into one another at the heels of a great pop song.
Part of what makes Slippers 08 so refreshing is how little it seems interested in proving itself. Contemporary indie rock often arrives wrapped in layers of conceptual framing, genre fusion, or hyper-detailed production. Albums can feel obligated to advertise their ambition. Slippers works in the opposite direction. The songs on Slippers 08 don't announce their sophistication; they reveal it gradually, through bubblegum melodies, sidewalk-chalk textures, and winsome repetition. What initially sounds effortless turns out to be carefully studied, drawing a line from early Beatles and Beach Boys records to later jangle-pop torchbearers like the Pastels.
That tension between immediacy and craft runs throughout the album. The guitars are crisp and sunlit, drawing from decades of power pop and garage rock without becoming trapped in nostalgia. Black's arrangements feel economical but never sparse. Every element serves its purpose. A vocal harmony appears exactly when a chorus needs lift. A guitar line curls around a melody before quietly disappearing. The record's pleasures are rarely overwhelming, but they are persistent.
Black not only has a long career in music — currently playing in Le Pain and previously in Yucky Duster, Beverly, and Gobbinjr — but is also studying animation at the California Institute of the Arts. She's cited Cartoon Network, based in her hometown of Atlanta, as an inspiration.
"They always had a lot of indie bands in the fold there," she has said. "I remember there was this Powerpuff Girls music compilation that had Devo and Apples In Stereo and Shonen Knife on it. My dad bought that for me and I just became obsessed with it." Those influences are easy to hear. What's equally clear is how Black's songwriting adopts the sly wit of those beloved cartoons, the feeling of watching a children's show when a piece of adult wisdom suddenly slips through the dialogue.
Slippers 08 becomes such an addictive listen because Black is so adept at rooting deeper sentiments within infectious melodies. I keep replaying these short-and-sweet tracks not only because they're like snacking on dry, sugary cereal, but because I become so enraptured by the songs that I nearly miss the darker linguistic alchemy Black is working with beneath the surface.
"When I said that I wanted you/ I meant out of my life," Black begins on the sprightly "Wants For Everyone," flipping a doting sentiment into something liberating and wry. "When I said that I needed you," she continues, "I was out of my mind." Black has a gift for subtly twisting the stakes of a phrase. "Spend all your time/ What you get back you won't know," she softly sings at the beginning 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, but mature feelings fuel its playfulness.
What's most striking is the way Black treats familiarity. Much of Slippers 08 is built from recognizable materials: ringing guitars, understated rhythms, melodies that seem to arrive already half-remembered. Yet Black approaches 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 continue a conversation that never really ended.
Slippers 08 continues to establish that pop can be an antidote to monotony. “I wake up another Sunday morning/ I still never know what to do,” Black sings over lethargic guitar strums and tumbling drums. The percussion is subtly caffeinated by tambourine hits. Maybe it’s her airy vocals, or the casual jaunt of these songs, but Slippers 08 makes the ambiguity of life feel like a hand-drawn card, a gentle, sentimental push to keep going. The small ways of tripping through the day — picking up a “mindless hobby like aromatherapy,” losing your wallet and keys, disappearing under your sheets — become strangely meaningful, like quiet proof of life itself.
Slippers 08 is out 6/5 on Perennial.
Other albums of note out 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
Mal Not Bad's Sophomore
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
