There is a peculiar clarity that comes when an artist stops negotiating with expectation and starts negotiating only with instinct. On ‘Base.,’ Jack Rutter, recording as Ritt Momney, sounds like someone who has walked to the brink of creative exhaustion, stared over the edge, and calmly stepped back, not with bombast, but with resolve. The result is a record that feels handmade and unguarded, roomy without being sparse, deliberate without feeling labored.
Rutter’s earlier ascent first through the viral bloom of ‘Her and All My Friends’ (self-released, 2019), and then the unlikely Billboard success of his cover of “Put Your Records On” (self-released, 2020), by Corinne Bailey Rae, could have locked him into a persona. Instead, ‘Base.’ finds him dismantling that persona piece by piece. After the glowing bedroom pop of ‘Sunny Boy’ (Disrupter Records, 2022), he retreated inward. He bought a house in Salt Lake City, married, bowled obsessively in the mornings, and quietly rebuilt his relationship to music from scratch. That domestic grounding hums beneath the album’s surface; it feels lived-in rather than performed.
The title track sets the aesthetic thesis. Recorded to 8-track with bandmates Rick West and Chris Peranich, the song exhales instead of announces. The guitars feel immediate, the drums close enough to touch. There’s a confidence in how little it tries to impress. Rutter sings as if he’s rediscovering his own voice in real time, letting small imperfections remain. The choice to keep screens out of the room pays off immediately: you hear wood, wire, air.
“Lightshow” follows with a hazy glow, but its intensity is more basement bulb than arena spotlight. Rutter’s vocal delivery is tender and slightly off-center, recalling the introspective murmur of Alex G while flirting with the spectral melancholy of Radiohead. Yet it never feels derivative. Instead, it’s as if Rutter has absorbed those textures and sanded them down into something domestic and human sized.
“I’DDO” and “Body” lean into rhythm, though not in the slick, algorithm-friendly way one might expect from someone with a Hot 100 credit. The grooves wobble pleasantly. Basslines push forward, then retreat. West’s playing anchors the low end with patience, giving the songs a pulse that feels communal rather than programmed. On “Body,” Chris Peranich’s drums sound almost conversational, utilizing small fills and a cymbal swell that lingers just long enough to change the mood.
“Gunna” begins with acoustic strums and Rutter’s soft admission of deferred intention, it builds slowly, cracking open to reveal distortion and keys that swell like a thought you’ve been avoiding. The lyric about waiting for something undefined becomes a metaphor for creative paralysis. When the drums arrive, they feel earned. There’s a warmth to the crescendo, not triumph but acceptance.
“Rightback” and “Dog” play with repetition and restraint. “Dog” in particular feels like an inside joke stretched into existential reflection. Its simplicity is deceptive; beneath the offhand phrasing lies a meditation on loyalty and instinct. “Cat,” its companion piece, is looser, slyer, almost amused with itself. These tracks could have been throwaways in lesser hands, but here they become tonal palate cleansers, reminding us that reinvention can be playful.
“Somemore” and “If” drift into more contemplative territory. “Somemore” aches with a quiet yearning that never spills into melodrama. “If” is built around negative space; silence is treated as an instrument. The band resists the temptation to fill every corner, allowing the melody to hover. It’s a bold choice in an era allergic to stillness.
Then comes “The Tank,” the album’s most literal narrative and its most subversive. On paper, a song about the Utah Jazz deliberately losing games for better draft odds sounds like a novelty. In execution, it becomes an anthem for strategic collapse. Rutter sings about blowing it up for Cooper with a wink, but the subtext cuts deeper. There is liberation in admitting failure. There is possibility in starting from zero. The track lopes along with a slacker charm, its melancholy softened by humor. It is both about basketball and about burning down your own mythology.
“Love Around You” closes the record with a gentle expansiveness. The arrangement feels open-hearted, almost pastoral. Rutter’s voice, once tentative, now sounds settled. Not grand. Settled. The band locks in with an ease that suggests not perfection but trust. It’s the sound of musicians listening to one another rather than chasing a result.
What makes ‘Base.’ compelling is not its stylistic shifts or analog affectations, but its philosophical core. By relinquishing the expectations that trailed his earlier success, he has made something unburdened by performance anxiety. The lo-fi textures are not an aesthetic shield; they are evidence of a process designed to keep him honest. ‘Base.’ suggests that freedom is found not in reaching higher, but in digging downward to a foundation sturdy enough to hold whatever comes next. Ritt Momney has not made a comeback record. He has made a recalibration. And in doing so, he sounds more fully himself than ever before.
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