Sole has had a long and winding career that has taken him across the country, out of the country, across the country, and then back again, working with different producers, emcees, and live bands along the way, the whole time cultivating his style as a confrontational anarchist emcee. While he’s actually been producing for years, he’s intensified his efforts on those fronts in recent years, releasing the entirely self-produced Let Them Eat Sand just about one year ago. Since that time, he moved his family from Denver back to Maine, starting a new chapter in his life with his wife and baby son. He now comes back with another self-produced album to mark this period in his life, Destituent.

Destituent is an interesting album in a few different ways. For one, while both this album and the previous, Let Them Eat Sand, are both self-produced, they have markedly different styles to them. Where the last album had this sort of proto-industrial sound to it, Destituent sees Sole push his style into this new wave/post-punk territory that will be a little bit of a change of pace for his listeners. The beats are a lot more danceable than in the past, with synthesizers and bass constructing the backbone of the album. However, if this description is making you think that Sole might be making a pop album, you’re sadly mistaken. This is because while the music might have tones of Goth or New Romantic music of the early ‘80s, Sole is on a different wavelength as an emcee. Throughout much of his career, Sole has been confrontational on the mic, using his skills as an emcee to force discussion about politics and philosophy, challenging your beliefs and making you think about what you stand for and why. While this hasn’t completely changed with Sole, recent life changes have turned his lyricism inward more than on other records. It’s still full of thoughtful discussion about economics, government, the environment, and other issues, but it’s just being presented in a different way. This time around it feels more like a stream-of-consciousness flow from Sole’s mind as he’s working through why he left Denver, what it means to raise a child at this particular moment, how his politics have evolved up to this point, and how he can best live a life that reflects those politics. The result is an album from Sole that feels like you’re not just getting the public persona who’s been riling up crowds for the past twenty years, but you’re getting the guy at home who’s taking stock of his life and figuring out where he goes from here. It’s a really honest and raw album that gives us a little bit of a different look at Sole.

Sole’s career has gone through all sorts of twists and turns along the way, but whatever he did, you could be sure that he was going to go all in. Destituent shows a different side of Sole, both musically and lyrically, but you still get that raw passion and he’s still challenging his listeners. And that’s why we keep turning to Sole after all this time.