Skip to content
Search

Illuminati Hotties Deliver the Indie-Pop Record of the (Late) Summer With ‘Power’

Illuminati Hotties Deliver the Indie-Pop Record of the (Late) Summer With ‘Power’

“Every day’s a blessing/Every day’s a problem,” Sarah Tudzin sings on her fourth album, Power. If the sentiment is ambivalent, the sound is anything but: a sharp power-pop bounce that opens up into a radiant chorus. Tudzin, a Los Angeles singer-songwriter-producer-multi-instrumentalist who has been recording as Illuminati Hotties since the late 2010s, has called her openhearted DIY ethos “tenderpunk.” As a producer and recording engineer she’s worked with artists from Weyes Blood to Coldplay, and won a Grammy for her production on Boygenius’ 2023 landmark, The Record. With Power, she delivers a studio-craft masterstroke without scrimping a bit on the hard-hitting honesty that fuels her writing.

Tudzin goes from the strummy rush of “Throw (Life Raft)” to the neo-New Wave of “Falling In Love With Somebody Better,” to the tough indie-rock chug of “What’s the Fuzz,” nailing every one. Her writing has always been clever: Illuminati Hotties’ 2020 release Free I.H: This Is Not the One You’ve Been Waiting For opened up with a little kicky number entitled “Will I Get Cancelled If I Write a Song Called, ‘If You Were a Man You’d Be So Cancelled’,” while 2021’s Let Me Do One More came with “Threatening Each Other re: Capitalism.” Power has moments like that too. “Sleeping In” is a bubbly tune about about making peace with a relationship that slows you down: “Listening to Arthur Russell/Wait for you to move a muscle.” The album’s lead single, “Can’t Be Still,” rhymes “I’m a ball” with “Adderall,” setting lyrics about feeling unstoppably restless to a sheer melody.


Many of the songs here also deal with tough real-life struggles, particularly the title track, in which Tudzin sings about the loss of her mom over lush bedroom-pop that grows and grows until it almost feels symphonic. She sings movingly about trying to figure out how to keep processing the world when someone who helped ground your experience is gone. Elsewhere, against the tender lo-fi drift of “Rot,” she fights through personal malaise (“Covered in fog/I’m carrying on/It’s impossible),” her voice barely rising above a tense whisper.

The tension between top-level musical know-how and unguarded emotional realism places her in a lineage that runs through indie greats like Tegan and Sara and Liz Phair back to California rock forebears like Brian Wilson. But she’s not going it alone. Power has a deep bench of collaborators, peers like Sadie Dupuis of Speedy Ortiz, Melina Duterte (a.k.a. Jay Sum), and ubiquitous alt-pop producer John Congleton. It adds a heartening sense of community to a career-best LP takes the Illuminati Hotties project to a whole new level. Pretty soon, Tudzin might be taking home Grammys for her own records.

More Stories

Pierre Lapointe, Grand duke of broken souls

Cotton two-piece by Marni, SSENSE.com / Shirt from personal collection

Photographer Guillaume Boucher / Stylist Florence O. Durand / HMUA: Raphaël Gagnon / Producers: Malik Hinds & Billy Eff / Studio: Allô Studio

Pierre Lapointe, Grand duke of broken souls

Many years ago, while studying theatrical performance at Cégep de Saint-Hyacinthe, Pierre Lapointe was given a peculiar exercise by his teacher. The students were asked to walk from one end of the classroom to the other while observing their peers. Based solely on their gait, posture, and gaze, they had to assign each other certain qualities, a character, or even a profession.

Lapointe remembers being told that there was something princely about him. That was not exactly the term that this young, queer student, freshly emancipated from the Outaouais region and marked by a childhood tinged with near-chronic sadness, would have instinctively chosen for himself. Though he had been unaware of his own regal qualities, he has spent more than 20 years trying to shed this image, one he admits he may have subtly cultivated in his early days.

Keep ReadingShow less
Marketer Behind Fake Quotes in ‘Megalopolis’ Trailer Dropped by Lionsgate

Marketer Behind Fake Quotes in ‘Megalopolis’ Trailer Dropped by Lionsgate

Eddie Egan, a very real marketing consultant, lost his gig with Lionsgate this week after the studio discovered that quotes he used in a trailer for Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis were fabricated, according to Variety.

The conceit behind the teaser, which Lionsgate recalled on Wednesday, was that critics had trashed Coppola’s masterpieces throughout the decades, so why trust them? Except that the critics quoted didn’t actually write any of the pith. A quote attributed to Pauline Kael that was said to have run in The New Yorker, claiming The Godfather was “diminished by its artsiness,” never ran.

Keep ReadingShow less
Fact Checkers Try to Shield Trump From Project 2025’s Abortion Madness

Fact Checkers Try to Shield Trump From Project 2025’s Abortion Madness

One of the odder features of American journalism is that the columnists who hold themselves out as “fact checkers” and review claims made by politicians — calling balls, strikes, and “pinocchios” — are unusually terrible at it.

Fact checkers offered up several botched reviews of content from the Democratic National Convention, but nothing has broken their brains like Democrats’ sustained attacks on Donald Trump over Republicans’ anti-abortion agenda, which is laid out in gory detail in conservatives’ Project 2025 policy roadmap. 

Keep ReadingShow less
Cops Who Falsified Warrant Used in Breonna Taylor Raid Didn’t Cause Her Death, Judge Rules

Cops Who Falsified Warrant Used in Breonna Taylor Raid Didn’t Cause Her Death, Judge Rules

A federal judge in Kentucky ruled that two police officers accused of falsifying a warrant ahead of the deadly raid that killed Breonna Taylor were not responsible for her death, The Associated Press reports. And rather than the phony warrant, U.S. District Judge Charles Simpson said Taylor’s boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, was responsible for her death because he fired upon the police officers first — even though he had no idea they were police officers.

The ruling was handed down earlier this week in the civil rights violation case against former Louisville Police Detective Joshua Jaynes and former Sgt. Kyle Meany. The two were not present at the March 2020 raid when Taylor was killed. Instead, in 2022, Attorney General Merrick Garland accused the pair (along with another detective, Kelly Goodlett) of submitting a false affidavit to search Taylor’s home before the raid and then conspiring to create a “false cover story… to escape responsibility” for preparing the phony warrant. 

Keep ReadingShow less
Queens of the Stone Age Cancel Remaining 2024 Shows After Josh Homme Surgery

Queens of the Stone Age Cancel Remaining 2024 Shows After Josh Homme Surgery

Queens of the Stone Age have canceled the remainder of their 2024 tour dates — including a string of North American shows and festival gigs scheduled for the fall — as Josh Homme continues his recovery from an unspecified surgery he underwent in July.

“QOTSA regret to announce the cancellation and/or postponement of all remaining 2024 shows. Josh has been given no choice but to prioritize his health and to receive essential medical care through the remainder of the year,” the band wrote on social media.

Keep ReadingShow less