Lav's Music Corner

  Review by Lavender:  Bon Iver is one of the most acclaimed indie folk artists of the past 20 years. Helmed by Justin Vernon, the band's first two albums were beloved folk darlings of the indie blog era. Their next two albums in 2016 and 2019 were much more divisive, largely on account of their interpolation of electronic elements. Personally, though, I MUCH prefer those two records to the band's colder, sleepier early work. Their 5th album SABLE, fABLE  brings these two styles together while also introducing a sunny optimism and saccharine sweetness they've never had before. The result may very well be the best crop of Bon Iver tracks yet.  I'll start this review off by saying that the album's first four songs are excellent. They include the wonderful single S P E Y S I D E  that dropped last year and was released alongside the other songs that start the record off as an EP. I'm skipping a full breakdown of the songs here because I reviewed that EP last year, ...

Review by Lavender: Black Country, New Road is a band that requires more discussion than most that I cover on this blog. At the start of this decade, they erupted into the music scene with their universally acclaimed breakthrough single "Sunglasses." The song set the tone for their neurotic, monologue-driven, compositionally winding brand of post-punk, as well as setting expectations extremely high for the band's eventual debut. It's a bar that they eventually met with their 2021 debut masterwork For the first time , and one they would go on to surpass just the next year on their sophomore effort Ants From Up There . I'll put my cards on the table and confess that I think Ants From Up There  is a true masterpiece, my favorite album of the decade so far and, if you pressed me, probably in the ballpark of my favorite albums of all time. But just as the album was released, frontman Isaac Wood announced his departure from the band, citing mental health issues. While t...

It's getting to that time of the year already where I'm seeing just how many albums I want to talk about have already begun passing by. That's where these shorter, rapid-fire reviews come in handy. While I was working on my Jane Remover review for Ringtone Magazine , weekend 1 of Coachella was going on. Each year, I like to take the time between Coachella's two weekends to review some records of artists performing there that I probably wouldn't cover otherwise. SO that's exactly what we're gonna do, enjoy.  The Crux  - DJO My interest in DJO began last year and was pretty short-lived. The music project of Stranger Things actor and former Post Animal member Joe Keery scored a surprise chart hit with the dreamy “End Of Beginning,” which took off last year. I liked the song well enough and gave it an honorable mention on my best hit songs of the year list last year. But once singles started dropping for this new album with sun-kissed ultra-casual disposition, i...

Editors Note: Hello angels, Lavender here. I'm about to tell you the full story of this Nav review. I've been hard at work on this review of the new Jane Remover album Revengeseekerz   for Ringtone Magazine , something that took quite a bit of time and attention away from this blog, but was worth it because I'm REALLY happy with the final piece. In the meantime, I started to speak to some friends about contributing guest reviews for projects I didn't get the chance to cover while I was busy. Surprisingly, the first to come through was from a 100% unserious joke request for one of my girlfriends to review the new Nav record. Transparently, I find the record exhaustingly boring and hadn't considered covering it myself at all. To my surprise, she leaped at the opportunity to suffer through its 36-minute runtime and collect her thoughts into a review. It's my honor to present to you the debut album review from my girlfriend Megan, in its entirety, below.  Review by ...

Review by Lavender: Deafheaven are a once-divisive black metal band who made a huge splash in the first half of the 2010s by delivering a style of the notoriously insular genre that heavily incorporated elements of shoegaze and post-rock. That netted them tons and tons of critical acclaim, primarily centered around their 2013 masterpiece Sunbather, but also found them hit with some ultimately overblown backlash for their genre-bending approach to black metal. In the years since, they've spread those ambitions out even further with their previous album, 2021's Infinite Granite , shedding metal off almost entirely and focusing on dreamier indie rock and shoegaze. A year later, frontman George Clarke made heavy contributions to Alto Arc, an extremely experimental side project with a bizarre Mad Libs-style roster of contributors that I enjoyed a genuinely shocking amount. But now the band is back in full force, combining throttling black metal with expansive post-rock and dreamy la...

Review by Lavender: Perfume Genius  is the musical project of Mike Hadreas and one of the most beloved voices in the indie and art-pop scenes of the past 20 years. Since debuting in 2010, there has basically be an uninterrupted stream of critically acclaimed Perfume Genius records every few years leading up to the newly released 7th album Glory . In my opinion, the peak of the Perfume Genius catalog came in the form of 2017's masterpiece No Shape , which saw Mike beginning to work with producer and arranger Blake Mills, whose work is still present on Glory . For that reason and the fact that I've enjoyed every record he's ever released, I went into this album fully expecting great things.  I had no reason to think this album wouldn't be excellent based on the singles. "It's A Mirror" came first, and I think it's spectacular. I love the shift to more rustic instrumentation; you can really feel the physicality of it all, plus the refrains and vocals are ...