There’s no need to rehash the past if you’ve been enduring with Shamir for the long-haul. Those days masquerading as a dance-pop festival stage meal ticket for large indie label execs are far behind him, and we’ve had eight albums worth of genre-flexing material to get used to the fact that the Philadelphia-based songwriter creates music as dictated by the seasons of his life. Homo Anxietatum, Shamir’s ninth studio effort, definitely converges at a fully-realized point in that story. After years of dodging labels, Shamir has found his way onto an appropriate home at Kill Rock Stars, the label that gave us two of his energy inspos in Bikini Kill and Sleater-Kinney. The resulting album is a polarity full of the pop-adjacent and counter-counter nuanced charm that has come to define his sound ever since flipping off guaranteed industry plant status in favor of full creative control. Consider Shamir a soothsayer of the moment just as well, be it being ahead of it or right on time to pander to it, as last year’s dense, traumatic experimental industrial pop turn Heterosexuality heard him working with Strange Ranger’s Hollow Comet for an album that held gender and orientation discourse on a pulpit raw in ways the rest of the culture is still figuring out how to comfortably digest, and like its bookend, Homo Anxietatum gives himself permission to unburden his shoulders of that responsibility while still acknowledging the anxieties that come with living through it. You’d not guess it by the listen’s mostly cozy veneer of being fully present, however, in its play on millennial CD bargain bin pop-rock (“Oversized Sweater”, “The Beginning” — right down to the record scratch effects!) alongside Shamir’s own witchcraft of dance-punk (“Wandering Through”, “Our Song”) and spooky personal folk tales (“Calloused”, “Words’) informed by breakups and the ongoing work of working on your mental health. The presence of Rina Sawayama producer Justin Tailor plus assists from bandmate Grant Pavol and Teddy Thompson provide the album’s with a bigger pop feel that arguably matches the aspirations of those fabled Ratchet days. There’s no buzzy expectations to be concerned with, many people have come and gone, and yet he’s still standing here with probably the best thing he’s done inside and outside the metaphorical box.

Highlights: “Oversized Sweater”, “Our Song”, “Without You”

Shamir’s Homo Anxietatem will be released August 18th on Kill Rock Stars.

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