Lav's Music Corner

Members Only is a hip hop collective that has consisted of XXXTENTACION, Ski Mask The Slump God, Wifisfuneral, KiD Trunks, Rob Bank$, Flyboy Tarantino and many others through its half a decade run and this is the 4th and potentially final project from the group. Since 2015 they have been dropping groups projects full of distorted trap bangers that solidified the Florida Soundcloud scene. On the back of X's huge hit Look At Me  they collective popularized some of its more keynote members and the Vol. 3 edition of their project spawned some underground trap hits. But after the departure of Wifisfuneral, the popularizing of Ski Mask The Slump God and the tragic death of XXXTENTACION, mixed with the lack of singles leading up to this project it was hard to speculate what it may sound like and who it may feature.  Review By Lav: My expectations for Vol. 4  were very tempered, after the short and unfinished Skins  last year I didn't anticipate much new X music tha...

Sharon Van Etten is an American singer-songwriter that rose to prominence in 2012 with the release of her third studio album Tramp  which featured production work from The National's Aaron Dessner and was recorded in his home studio in Brooklyn. The follow up to that album was 2014's Are We There  a fantastically unique display of talent that earned her critical praise and a larger audience than ever before. Taking 4 years to follow-up this project left big expectations for her follow-up. This was only made more fervent by multiple singles which incorporated some unique and interesting sounds different from each other, and from what the singer-songwriter genre typically has to offer. Review by Lav: After I enjoyed Sharon Van Etten's last album 2014's Are We There  and the roster of singles leading up to this long overdue follow-up impressed me I was excited for this project but not at all sure what to expect from such a unique and genre bending singer songwriter. ...

Deerhunter are a mid 2000's indie rock band who captured our attention with 2007's Cryptograms  and have released a spree of successful projects since that help keep their name a recognizable one on the indie wire. Microcastle, Halcyon Digest and Monomania  make up a trio of solid releases where the band embraces the sounds of indie rock without really forwarding them. Even though they make music you can hear from just about anywhere they have done it with consistency. Unfortunately that consistency ran out with 2015's Fading Frontier  a seemingly hurried and uninspired follow up that found the band seeming more confused and behind the times than ever before, but after 3 singles of varying interest and success it was hard to pin down where the band would be in their newest full length form. Review by Lav: Deerhunter have always been AN indie band, but for me unlike many others they've never been THE indie band. Their music blends together blissful psychadelia with...

Toro Y Moi Chaz Bundick is the songwriter and multi-instrumentalist behind the moniker that has been pumping out chillwave and glo-fi infused projects for the better part of a decade. His breakthrough project 2010's Causers Of This  made him a well known name in the world of beat driven indie music and his numerous projects and collaborations in the time since have helped cement him as a consistent artist but one with a noticeable ceiling. His last album 2017's Boo Boo  was the most critically and commercially successful since that original breakthrough album and after he began exploring some interesting ideas in the vein of his previous work with Outer Peace 's singles he set the stage for a solid effort that dives into some fresh ideas. Review By Lav: Toro Y Moi was a name that I always knew, I didn't hear him in 2010 when he first came to light in the indie scene and I spent the next 7 years knowing him only by name sake. Then by chance a friend reccomended the...

Future, is the widely successful and hugely influential pseudonym of Nayvadius Wilburn, an Atlanta trap rapper who has played a huge role in defining movements of popular rap culture in the second half of this decade. His early projects Pluto and Honest  put him on the map and resulted in his underwhelming selection as a XXL freshman in 2012. But on the back of some hugely successful singles Future had a 2015 for the ages. His 56 Nights  mixtape, the collaborative mixtape with Zaytoven Beast Mode , his biggest and most acclaimed commercial album DS2  and a hugely popular collaborative album with Drake What A Time To Be Alive  all combined for one of the most dominant years in recent memory by a popular artist. Since then it has been harder and harder to consider Future groundbreaking or as influential an artist as he once was. 2017 saw Future struggling with the very average HNDRXX  and and bloated and lacking FUTURE and even his more quiet 2018 didn't do won...

James Blake, has been up to this point one of the best, most creative and most consistent artists of this decade. Since coming up as a dubstep infused experimentalist in the early 2010's with EPs like Klaiverwerke and Enough Thunder, James Blake gained popularity and set the stage for his spectacular debut self-titled album James Blake. The album was met with critical acclaim and was one of only 3 10/10 scores that Music Corner gave out that year, as well as awarding it our album of the year nod. Since his experimental bedroom electronica masterpiece Blake has dropped two fantastic album sin its wake. 2013's Overgrown was a much less jagged and experimental album that relied on gorgeous layers of backing instrumentation and spacious atmospheres to succeed. James Blake vocally took more of a center stage than ever before on his third album The Colour In Anything  which was surprised dropped in 2016. Softer and more distant instrumentals and huge sparse compositions meant that...