Ben LaMar Gay – yowzers
Chicago’s musical polymath Ben LaMar Gay has announced “Yowzers,” his latest album, set for release on June 6, 2025 via International Anthem. The title track, which opens the album, serves as the lead single and offers a glimpse into Gay’s ever-expanding musical universe.
“Yowzers” demonstrates Gay’s talent for finding profundity in seemingly simple terms. The track builds around a three-chord piano progression and repetitive vocal mantra – “Ain’t gon snow no more / Rain gon pour and pour / Fire don’t stop no more” – creating a hypnotic meditation on climate anxiety that somehow manages to be both unsettling and oddly comforting. The repetition transforms mundane phrases into something mantric, a technique Gay has been refining throughout his career.
The vocal arrangement features a mini-choir of Ayanna Woods, Tramaine Parker, and Ugochi Nwaogwugwu, whose voices swell and recede around the central piano motif, enhancing the song’s mesmerizing quality.
According to Gay himself, the word “yowzers” emerged “while observing the intersection of humor and horror in our present reality.” He elaborates: “On one side of a coin flip, ‘yowzers’ is a deep sigh that quietly exits the body after facing the absurd. On the other side, it is a cry of amazement at how many secrets were left behind to help us endure and transcend the absurdity.”
The full album features Gay’s working quartet: Tommaso Moretti (drums, percussion, voice), Matthew Davis (tuba, piano, bells, voice), and Will Faber (guitar, ngoni, bells, voice). The group’s chemistry, developed through years of touring, forms the foundation of the album, recorded live at Chicago’s Palisade Studios with the musicians arranged in a circle to capture their collective energy.
The album is described as “an utterly unique, joyfully irreverent psychedelic fantasia of folklore, free jazz, and avant-garde blues” – which sounds both exhausting and exhilarating in equal measure. Gay’s ability to synthesise disparate traditions into something personal yet universal has been evident throughout his career, from his 2018 compilation “Downtown Castles Can Never Block The Sun” to 2021’s acclaimed “Open Arms To Open Us” and 2022’s electronic experiment “Certain Reveries.”
Throughout this sprawling creative output, Gay maintains a commitment to “taking the stories of the past and pushing them outward, filtered through a sense of self, to keep that information moving.” On “Yowzers,” this manifests in what he calls “creative polyrhythmic constructions” that deliver “familiar folk melodies” in unexpected ways. “There are overlapping rhythms all around us,” Gay notes, “and so it reminds you of the reality of the world when you hear them. It’s a loop, and the loop is constantly changing.”
