Thundercat at Aviva Studios

From cult hero to global collaborator, Thundercat is back with his first album in six years, and a headline show at Aviva Studios.

Thundercat’s always been a musician’s musician. “The best bass player on the planet”, according to Flea. Someone whose technical fluency is matched by a deep feel for groove, harmony and humour. Following three critically acclaimed albums, his role at the heart of Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly placed him at the creative epicentre of one of the 21st century’s most influential hip-hop albums, scoring him a GRAMMY and bona fide star status. That moment didn’t just elevate his profile; it afforded him the freedom to largely do what he likes, from the abstracted introspection of 2020’s It Is What It Is to roaming as a collaborator and creative catalyst across various hip hop, pop, jazz and electronic projects.

That sense of both freedom and restlessness feeds directly into Distracted, his forthcoming fifth album, featuring contributions from an incredible cast of artists and friends. Across the record, A$AP Rocky, WILLOW, Tame Impala, Lil Yachty, Channel Tres and the late Mac Miller all collaborate, with super-producer Greg Kurstin working closely alongside Flying Lotus, Kenny Beats and The Lemon Twigs. It’s pretty clear that it’s the most expansive Thundercat record to date – and it’s not even dropped yet.

Press materials frame Distracted as a response to overstimulation and the narrowing of imagination in an age of inexorable technological progress. Thundercat jokes about sci-fi dreams of space travel before undercutting them with the anticlimax of the present – a gap between what we were promised and what we got. What we got, as he sees it, is distraction – less a crisis than an ambient condition of modern life, where endless updates pile up until focus feels like a luxury item. It’s a perspective that blends humour with quiet disappointment, and – in the early singles at least – it finds its clearest expression in the messiness of everyday emotional life.

On these singles, he turns inward, often making himself the butt of the joke. The slinky, funk-ed-up ‘I Did This To Myself’ is a study in romantic self-sabotage, built around a disco groove and an absurdly accomplished bass performance. Across elegant melodies sung in his trademark breathy falsetto, he leans into awkward honesty, with that characteristic oddball humour finding a kindred spirit in Lil Yachty, who drops ad-libs like “the more that I look in your face, you look like your dad / And it’s hard picturing him with a big ol’ ass” – slightly throwaway, surreal and excessive in a way that perfectly matches the song’s self-mockery.

Elsewhere, ‘No More Lies’, his collaboration with Tame Impala, circles the exhaustion of emotional half-truths, swapping irony for confession as his angelic voice melts into Kevin Parker’s lush and layered analogue synths. ‘I Wish I Didn’t Waste Your Time’ follows suit with a dreamy, spacey, synth jam that reckons with missed chances and emotional misfires. Together, these songs collapse the album’s big ideas into something more relatable: the fallout of distraction, and how easily time, attention and connection slip away, even when you know better.

That philosophy shows up in how Thundercat performs the music, too. At live shows, including a recent Montreal Jazz Festival appearance, he emphasises playfulness – pulling a young fan onstage to dance along with the band, stretching songs, breaking the fourth wall. Fun, in this context, isn’t escapism so much as method – a way of staying alert and engaged. A reminder that presence matters, now more than ever.

All of which makes his return to Manchester feel like a moment. Landing at Aviva Studios on the eve of Distracted’s release, this is a chance to catch Thundercat mid-transition – with new material still settling, live ideas still to play for, and the questions the album wrestles with very much unresolved.