I don’t know a hell of a lot about the inscrutable Tom Boogizm other than the fact that he is based in Manchester and runs the Shotta Tapes label, but I’ve certainly been a casual fan of his eclectic and shapeshifting solo releases over the last few years. This latest full-length is my favorite by a landslide and seems to be a bit of a breakthrough release of sorts, as it improbably landed at the top of Boomkat’s Best of 2025 list. While it was one of my own 2025 favorites as well (with some caveats, of course), Dancin’ in the Streets is a very weird, lo-fi, and deconstructed collection of songs that sometimes feels like an outsider soul masterpiece or post-modern blues album and sometimes sounds like tossed off lo-fi experimentalism.
The best moments resemble stark, intimate demos for a bedroom soul album that have been hypnagogically enhanced and fragmented in the studio rather than expanded into fully formed songs, yet the album as a whole also arguably works as a slowly collapsing and enigmatic pop music fever dream. Notably, Boogizm used to host a freewheeling NTS show called Robbin’ Lobsters from Mobsters that covered everything from hip-hop and dance music to no wave and that “anything goes” eclecticism clearly remains an integral part of his DNA.
I bring up that wide-ranging taste because Dancin’ in the Streets sometimes sounds like Boogizm decided to indulge his inner Prince, yet that impulse collided with an equally strong desire to make a private press loner folk album. At other times, however, it seems like he instead wanted to make dance music deconstructed into undanceability, a flamenco album, field recordings of Spanish train stations, or simply experiment with blown-out textures and elusive/confused beats. Normally, such a surreal stylistic grab bag of sketchlike genre experiments would suggest that Boogizm is more of an inspired dilettante than a serious artist with a coherent vision, but those waters are muddied by the surprising number of times in which he casually unleashes a killer guitar motif or drops an absolutely perfect hook. Boogizm’s vocals are a similarly curious feature, as he sometimes approximates an inhumanly chopped, screwed, and multi-tracked version of Fine Young Cannibals’ Roland Gift.
The smoldering and soulful opener “I H T” is the album’s most revelatory piece, as its heart is essentially just Boogizm’s hushed voice and a strummed acoustic guitar. While it features a great and lamentably timely chorus hook (“we’re living in hard times”), I was more struck by Boogizm’s absolutely perfect distillation and his genius for small details like Adam Sinclaire’s smoky flute melodies, the chattering of some nearby birds, and the scrabbling, twangy guitar flourishes. Notably, Boogizm handles the vocals himself on “I H T,” but there are a number of talented guest vocalists who turn up throughout the album as well.
For example, the album’s other instant classic (“NOT 2NITE”) features Cansu Kandemir on the mic. Unlike “I H T,” however, “NOT 2NITE” feels like it could have once been a legit chart-seeking pop contender that had nearly all of its instrumentation carved away to leave behind only sultry vocals, submerged bass throb, a darkly beautiful piano motif, spidery dreampop guitars, and some smoldering and strangled eruptions of electric guitar. While both pieces are quite different, both capture Boogizm at the height of his powers in all of the ways that truly matter, as they each share a bleary nocturnal vibe, deep soul, a cool central motif, no-frills arrangements and production, and some casually virtuosic and fiery guitar eruptions.
The album’s remaining pieces rarely have all of those elements in place at the same time again, but I have no idea if that is because white-hot inspiration only struck Boogizm twice or because the album intentionally has a dissolving/collapsing arc in which diffuse and kaleidoscopic abstraction gradually consumes Rat Heart’s pop heart. There are still plenty of cool moments lurking throughout the other pieces, however. I am especially fond of “GREY SKIES, LIES + MEAT & POTATO PIES,” as it features a cool stuttering piano loop and some hot electric guitar licks, but all of flautist Adam Sinclaire’s appearances tend to be memorable as well (particularly the yearning “I DON’T KNOW YET”). I also love some of Boogizm’s skwonking and blurting guitarwork, as he has quite an unusually strangled and staccato aesthetic.
The catch with Dancin’ in the Streets, however, is that those moments disappear almost completely in the album’s second half and some of the more experimental/abstract pieces are more mystifying than great. For example, “THEY DONE A NUMBER ON US” sounds like a flamenco guitarist performing in a cavernous parking garage while cheers fitfully erupt from a nearby bullfighting arena, while “REAL HARDCORE PLEASURE” culminates in a passage that sounds like a host of AI voices reading personal ads aloud over a wonky and lurching funk groove. Yet another track sounds like a dark ambient piece set in a haunted train station. The closing “IGOTDRONESINMYBONES” is another headscratcher, as guest Juan Camilo turns up for some poetic sounding Spanish-language spoken word over a backdrop of industrial hum, disjointed metal percussion, and a host of ghostly howls and moans.
Unsurprisingly, I have absolutely no idea what it all means or why such an objectively promising album took such a bizarre final shape, but Boogizm was certainly on a streak regardless. While Dancin’ in the Streets is a raw, croaking, sketchlike, elusive, and perplexing album as a whole, the best bits feel like tossed off diamonds of brilliance from a restless artist who rarely seems to linger in one place long enough to reach its full potential. In fact, this album favorably reminds me of John Darnielle’s early boombox-recorded Mountain Goats albums, as Boogizm captured a series of real, raw, and spontaneous flashes of inspiration and did not seem particularly bothered about whether they resembled “finished” songs or any kind of marketable commodity. That can admittedly be exasperating at times, but those feelings are mostly balanced out by Boogizm’s almost supernaturally unerring instincts when he hits the mark just right.
