Innocents in Babylon doesn’t always work. Maybe it’s an extension of the fact that all of your reporter’s favorite musicians in the local New York City music scene right now just happen to be in their mid-twenties or mid-thirties (Renny Conti is such a Brooklyn-based musician). Either way, Conti’s self-titled is a refreshingly human record. It’s a well-timed, heat-seeking missile to the grown-up adolescent who’s just a few years past being able to relate to their favorite coming-of-age films anymore, and acutely aware of that distance/separation/isolation. For this cosmically stultified demographic, Renny Conti is solace.

Conti’s musky, different lyrics are delivered with intention and purpose, but not eagerness. Our singer brings a slightly chilly air to this record that keeps it cool instead of overly jejune. More akin to Pavement’s “Slanted and Enchanted” or, if things go poorly for all of us, Purple Mountains in fifteen years. Walk-with-you lyrics rip in on “South Star”: “It could’ve never been this way. I mean, it could’ve been this way, but it’s not.” Later, on “Room to Room,” Conti confides, “I feel your pain, I too want everything, wanting the world to stop, or just for life to change.”

On “I Find It Hard” (which might be the star track for your reporter), Conti brings a unique vocal delivery that doesn’t appear anywhere else on the album. Conti is singing differently here and it works. This New Voice is backed by an unconventional chorus, a few voices loosely strung together in a melancholic drone. Like if the Greek chorus in a Homeric drama repeated every line after Falstaff’s soliloquy, it’s surprising in a way that makes you smile, but it’s a bitter smile. The lyrics are bleaker and more honest on this track than any other on this dimensional, all-seasons record – self-conflicting like its just-past-ripened audience.

With Renny Conti, the artist rides the neo-wave of Neil Young worship, but not with such piety that it’s a faithful adaptation or in any way lacks originality. Not unlike MJ Lenderman, but tougher on the ears, toothy with dissonant key chords, especially on “Room to Room,” which ends in a broken mirror guitar solo that belongs on “Metal Machine Music.” Conti’s album is all about tension and release, but a release that doesn’t let you off the hook entirely. If “Manning Fireworks” found a place in your Best Albums of 2024 roundup, but you want it darker, Conti brings the flame.

This, as aforementioned, is a human record – not a perfect record – but that doesn’t stop it from being a masterpiece. The prickly-world-weary gauntlet has been thrown down and Renny Conti has answered. A rare and welcome reprieve from the fear panic white noise of Modern Life On Mars (a volume his track “Life on Earth” aptly points out). If you partake in general anesthetics or arylcyclohexylamine derivatives, put on “Life of Earth” and lie face-up on the rug (and thank us later).

This new voice on the indie scene is marked by a lived-in feel. Although not his musical debut, it feels fitting that this album is the artist’s self-titled. Still, “Andrew Plays” is arguably the most important song in this collection, and Conti’s voice isn’t on it at all. It’s an instrumental track less than two minutes long. If music has the power to move you – or, more accurately, if you’ve managed to stay un-soul-hardened enough that the power of music is still able to reach you in 2025 – to not give this one a listen is to cheat oneself. “Andrew Plays” is on-par with such powerful, wordless movers as Cobain’s “Letters to Frances” and Ed Harcourt’s “Like Sunday, Like Rain.”

Renny Conti is a mature evolution from the artist’s 2020 “Figurines.” Five years later, this is that record’s older brother, who went away and got cooler and a little wiser and tucked some more experience and technical mastery under his belt. Now, he’s back in town, and everyone at the dive’s tugging on their friend’s shirt sleeves in a whispered chorus of “Do you know that guy? Who’s that guy over there?” Lookin good. Renny Conti is detail-oriented down to the cryptic, evocative cover art, promising subtle magic and mood swings that can give you jet lag. Cloudy romanticism meets eyelash-searing realism. Happily, the album totally delivers on that promise. Expect to hear more of the name Renny Conti.

You can listen to Renny Conti out on all platforms now!

Written by Autumn Swiers