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Brick Wall Comedy
Cover image credit: Thumbnail: YouTube · Darryl Lenox - Topic

Super Bloom

Darryl Lenox

Stand Up! Records · Album · 2021 · 50 min

A blind comic's philosophical spin on a decade of bad luck.

Listen on Stand Up! Records(opens in a new tab)

Darryl Lenox’s second album is built on the premise that a complete loss of eyesight is actually a pretty good way to avoid the visual garbage of the modern world. Waking up entirely blind in 2021 after years of deteriorating vision, Lenox uses his new reality to find a philosophical perspective on contemporary society. He works clean of the visual panic of the pandemic and racial tension, arguing that not seeing the news makes him a far more objective observer.

Released on Stand Up! Records, the album serves as a thematic sequel to his 2012 breakout, Blind Ambition. Lenox mixes heavy personal tragedies, including his blindness, a divorce, and the loss of his ex-wife to suicide, with an easygoing optimism that matches his daily mantra of health, wealth, success, and love. Notable tracks like “Blindness > Blackness” find him explaining why losing his sight took the fear out of being a Black man in America. He also tells stories about friendly Newfoundlanders reclaiming racial slurs and the logistics of a half-hearted back rub. The record went to number one on the iTunes comedy chart and was praised for finding a silver lining in a decade’s worth of bad luck.

The set list

4 bits

  1. Accidentally sitting on a cab driver's face

    Entering a cab in Toronto while holding a 'Muslim burrito' in one hand and a Black Lives Matter sign in the other, inadvertently tea-bagging the driver, and asking to be taken to the nearest riot.

  2. Friendliest Racist in the World

    Recalling how friendly Newfoundlanders disrupted decades-old trauma from racist slurs by deploying those same slurs with sheer warmth and overt friendliness.

  3. Trading sexual favors for Skittles

    Reflecting on how he was once willing to palm genitals for Skittles versus his modern personal 'Super Bloom' of having sweetness applied to and removed from his own nether regions.

  4. Encounter with an older Black man who recognized him from Conan

    Being identified in public as 'the real philosophical n----- with the f----- up eyes'.

How it plays

Tone
Equally filthy and philosophical, therapeutic, and deeply optimistic with an unexpected message of hope.
On stage
Philosophical, introspective, calm, and Yoda-like, delivering material drawn from intuitive emotional energy rather than visual observation.
Pace
Calming and capable of shifting the temperature of the room in one breath.
About
Total blindness and heightened senses, Finding hope and renewal after tragedy, Race and friendly racism, Personal trauma and relationships

What the critics said

Praised for its uplifting positivity, emotional depth, and humor, highlighting that life holds silver linings even after immense hardship and tragedy.

Summed up from reviews, articles and listings. Sources: music.apple.com, press.thepromotionpeople.ca, thegabber.com, hnmag.ca, en.wikipedia.org.

Backstory

In early 2021, Lenox lost the remainder of his sight and became completely blind. He also weathered personal tragedies including the suicide of his first wife and a 2018 divorce from his second wife. He adopted the California wildflower super bloom—which bloomed following wildfires and heavy downpours—as a metaphor for his personal realization that good can emerge from tragedy.

Details

Released
Runtime
50 min
Where
Stand Up! Records (album)
Honors
Reached No. 1 on the iTunes comedy chart
Topics

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