Album Of The Week: Reviewing Slippers Slippers 08

12:05 PM EDT on June 2, 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

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_Originally reported by [Stereogum](https://stereogum.com/2500983/album-of-the-week-slippers-slippers-08/reviews/album-of-the-week/)._