Today International Anthem announces Yowzers, a new album by Chicago composer, improviser, instrumentalist and musical folklorist Ben LaMar Gay, out June 6th, 2025. The album’s opener and title track “yowzers” is available on all DSPs today as lead single. Listen to “yowzers” and preorder Yowzers here.

In the growing tradition of Gay’s recorded output – including his 2018 greatest-hits-meets-debut album Downtown Castles Can Never Block the Sun and 2021’s critically-acclaimed Open Arms to Open Us, which have both become legendary for enveloping myriad sounds, stories, and dimensions of music into potent bodies of work – Yowzers is an utterly unique, joyfully irreverent psychedelic fantasia of folklore, free jazz, and avant-garde Blues.

At the heart of the album is Gay’s working quartet with Tommaso Moretti (drums, percussion, voice), Matthew Davis (tuba, piano, bells, voice), and Will Faber (guitar, ngoni, bells, voice). The group’s chemistry is palpable, cultivated over years of touring and performing together.

“A big part of the language this quartet has developed is spatial,” says Gay. “It’s seeing and hearing it live. You’re dealing with a thing that is older than the industry that sells it, and if you’ve never experienced those bodies in the room, there can be a disconnect.”

Striving to capture that raw, unfiltered energy on Yowzers, Gay tracked his quartet live at Palisade Studios in Chicago, with all four musicians sitting in a small circle, channeling and documenting their collective vibrations in real-time.

To expand the sonic spectrum of the album, Gay also composed and recorded a series of pieces in-studio at International Anthem HQ in Chicago. Working alongside engineer Dave Vettraino, Gay augmented his studio constructions with contributions from his bandmates, woodwind player Rob Frye, and a mini-choir comprising vocalists Ayanna Woods, Tramaine Parker, and Ugochi Nwaogwugwu.

One of the highlights from this batch is the album’s titular opener “yowzers,” which is also available as a lead single on all digital music platforms today. It’s a simple, soulful, three-chord piano and vocal repetition nestled in the hypnotic, swelling effect of the Woods/Parker/Nwaogwugwu choir. The song’s undecorated lyrics cut deep, echoing the climate of our times with a universal Blues we can all feel in our bones:

Ain’t gon snow no more x4
Rain gon pour and pour x4
Fire don’t stop no more x4

About the album and track title, Gay says: “Yowzers” was a word and a sound that came to mind while observing the intersection of humor and horror in our present reality. 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.”

As a whole, Yowzers recalls the high-minded freedom of Liberation Music Orchestra, the abstract boom-bap balladry Georgia Anne Muldrow, the unbridled rhythms and sandpaper bellows of Bukka White, the harmolodic cartoon glory of Arthur Blythe’s Illusions, or the oft-copped but rarely distilled patterns of Naná Vasconcelos. It’s a fresh thought made up of old ideas, filtered through an improvisational approach and a lifetime of stories and secrets embodied.

LIVE DATES
Sunday May 4th – Long Play Festival – Brooklyn, NY – tickets
September 11th-14th – Sonic Transmissions – Austin, TX – tickets

Monday May 5th – Yowzers Advanced Listening + Ben LaMar Gay in Conversation – Brooklyn, NY – rsvp