Lav's Music Corner

Of Monsters And Men is an Icelandic indie band that skyrocketed to stardom around the world in 2011 when their mega-hit Little Talks  took off and their debut album My Head Is An Animal  went platinum later that same year. Despite being met with critical acclaim the band took four years to release a follow-up and by that time much of their initial hype had died down. Making this even more of a challenge to the band was that their second record Beneath The Skin  was met with lukewarm critical reception. Now once again the band has taken four years between studio albums and have the opportunity to recover their reputation as an indie act of veteran status with two singles that were met positively leading up to this record. Review By Lavender: My Head Is An Animal  sounded so exciting in 2011, there were huge walls of instrumentation that enveloped so much of the tame alternative rock and folk inspired indie that dropped around the time. Not only did Of Monsters ...

Chance The Rapper is a Chicago based rapper who blew up earlier this decade with his gospel inspired style and youthful energy on his 10 Day  mixtape. The very next year after this debut mixtape Chance dropped his second tape Acid Rap  to universal critical acclaim and it became his breakout project. With numerous marquee features and an unmistakable style the mixtape turned Chance into an overnight sensation and is considered by many to be one of the best rap records of the entire decade. Chance took his time crafting a follow-up record, ultimately dropping "Chance 3" Coloring Book  in 2016. The album featured a historic list of features from acclaimed and popular artists across the board and was met pretty positively from critics. After another three year wait Chance spent most of 2019 teasing his upcoming "debut album". He dropped the single Groceries  earlier this year but the track doesn't land on the record and ultimately the album was released with...

Iggy Azalea is an Australian rapper who gained a huge profile earlier this decade off the back of major industry support from TI's label and a number of high profile feature tracks with artists like Ariana Grande and Charli XCX. After releasing her debut album The New Classic  to critical shrugs in 2015 it has taken quite a while for a follow-up record, due to label trickery and a first attempt at the second record being scrapped. Review By Lavender: Iggy Azalea has spent about half a decade being one of the baddest bitches in rap music, and unlike many of her male contemporaries that are so easy to hate, personality is the highlight of her image. Unfortunately what she owns in personality she has historically lacked in musical consistency. Her debut album The New Classic  was one that I genuinely wanted to like quite a bit but fell short repeatedly with flat hooks and some painfully generic songwriting. Since then she has dropped a few singles none of which have really...

1. DIIV - Skin Game DIIV returns after a long studio album drought of three years with the lead single for their upcoming third record running away with the #1 spot this week. 2. The 1975 = The 1975 Matty Healy and company get their new era kicked off with a quick turn around from the last one dropping the band-named track that has been the opener to each of their records so far up to this point. 3. Taylor Swift - The Archer Taylor has only one way to go an its up, with the midweek drop of The Archer  Taylor takes a risk from a chart success standpoint but garners plenty of mid-week attention all her own. 4. Tegan And Sara - I'll Be Back Someday Tegan and Sara kick off their own new era with their last studio record having come three years ago. The duo have co-opted songs they wrote in high school and assembled them into a new record that should sound like more of a return to form for the band. 5. Liam Gallagher - Once Liam continues his surprisingly successful 20...

Big K.R.I.T is a Mississippi born rapper and producer who has roots deeply ingrained in the history of southern hip hop. After signing to Def Jam records in the early 2010's he released some notable singles and a moderately successful debut album, but since then with a lot of industry backing K.R.I.T has failed to win over the commercial audience, and has been met with highs and lows from critics. After dropping one of his most acclaimed albums late in 2017 K.R.I.T released an EP last year and is following this up  with this full length. Review By Lavender: This is a review that I can explain almost entirely in the preamble. For years I followed Big K.R.I.T's career of signing to Def Jam records to being a XXL Freshman, and I've heard almost all of the massive amount of music he has released in this decade. While he is clearly talented the cancer that has plagued K.R.I.T's career is a horrible lack of consistency as with mixtape after mixtape he failed to put his...

Bloc Party is a long standing British punk band who blew up off their critically acclaimed debut record  Silent Alarm  in 2005 and after a number of lineup changes the band hasn't been able to match the critical success of their debut. The current roster of the group went on a tour of Europe in 2018 and 2019 playing their debut album in full and assembled a full live album from various performances on the tour. Review Lavender: I am a HUGE fan of Bloc Party, and I have been for just about as long as I can remember. Unlike a lot of music I was into growing up, upon reflection Bloc Party sounds as crisp and refreshing as ever looking back on their career. While I feel so many of their later releases from  Intimacy  to  Hymns  are severely underrated there's no denying that their debut record  Silent Alarm  is the bands true masterpiece as well as one of my favorite rock albums of the 2000's. So after they announced that the tour in which they...

Blood Orange is the long time project of British R&B singer and songwriter Devonte Hynes. Dev has released four records under the Blood Orange moniker met with varying degrees of critical success and announced the  Angel's Pulse  mixtape just days before its release and dropped it without a single. Review By Lavender: For a long time my opinion caught the ire of many Blood Orange fans when in 2013 his  Cupid Deluxe  record began to turn heads, but I wasn't convinced. Still to this day the record reads to me as an homage to 80s synth pop with a funky/R&B twist, but made by somebody who didn't really understand what made that music so good to begin with. The follow-up  Freetown Sound  was certainly an improvement but I still wasn't head over heels for the sound, especially given how much acclaim the record received upon release. It wasn't until Blood Orange's next release that I finally came around to his sound, as it transitioned into a much s...

The Soft Cavalry is the new project of former Slowdive member Rachel Goswell and her husband Steve Clarke. Goswell has been busy in the past few years with the supergroup album Minor Victories  in 2016 and the self-titled Slowdive  record in 2017, so coming into The Soft Cavalry  she has both a veteran status and an active prescence in the worlds of modern dream pop and shoegaze. Review By Lavender: Slowdive is absolutely legendary as one of the big three shoegaze bands and a prime example of the youthful energy for experimentation that shoegaze was built on. Since their run in the 90s Rachel hasn't slowed with her output of music I've enjoyed. The 2016 Minor Victories record was one of my picks for the most underrated of the year and one that I still enjoy revisiting, but in 2017 Slowdive released their first new record in over 20 years and Slowdive  is the record that truly got me back into Rachel's output. That record landed in my top 10 albums of the year ...

Jaden Smith is an actor, rapper and fashion icon who is the son of another famed multi-talented figure Will Smith. After releasing a number of songs as a child and an increasing output of singles Jaden saw fit to release his commercial debut record SYRE  in 2017.  He followed that very thematic concept album with the looser collection of tracks on the critically panned Sunset Tapes  last year. Now with little notice Jaden is releasing his second true studio album and companion piece to SYRE , ERYS . Review By Lavender: I was worried going into ERYS for a number of reasons and I was kind of hoping Jaden would move on from this approach going forward. SYRE  was a decent album with some high points in it's tracklist but one that ran far, far too long and featured plenty of misguided songs that served no purpose on the records themes or were sonic misses. Pair this with the painfully breezy brevity of Jaden's follow-up The Sunset Tapes  and the fact that...

1. XXXTETACION - Royalty (Feat. Ky-Mani Marley, Steffelon Don & Vybz Kartel) Over a year after his tragic dead X finds himself back on top of the charts with a fan favorite snippet finally making its way into a finished product featuring some of its original collaborators. 2. Charli XCX - Gone  (Feat. Christine And The Queens) Charli drops yet another single from her collab heavy upcoming album this time recruiting the services of Christine and The Queens, its safe to say hype is successfully built up. 3. Wilco - Love Is Everywhere (Beware) Legendary indie band Wilco is back after a three year absence with the lead single to their album coming later this year. 4. Whitney - Valleys (My Love) Whitney got their new era off to a hot start with their excellent first single and they hope to follow it up with this track as the release date of their sophomore record approaches. 5. Four Tet - Dreamer After dropping a record to criminally low profile last year Four Tet drops...

Dreamville is a subsidiary group of Interscope records founded by J. Cole that features some up and coming talents like J.I.D, Earthgang and Bas. The label has released two Revenge Of The Dreamers compilations but with a larger roster than ever and a number of young, high profile features III  is the biggest and boldest of the projects to date. Review By Lavender: So it's no secret I haven't exactly been in love with J. Cole's output apart from 2014 Forrest Hills Drive . Despite him hailing from my home state his last two albums have left me underwhelmed for very different reasons. Given that I haven't been head over heels for J.I.D or Earthgang despite enjoying their records I still think this album had a lot of potential. Now that Dreamers  is here it faces the challenges of many albums of its type, the quality of the tracks depends greatly on the quality of the artists involved, and that comes with its own issues. There are a handful of songs here that are d...

Kim Petras is a German born pop singer who has spent much of her life in the limelight after publicly undergoing gender transition surgery at a young age and began releasing a string of singles starting in 2017. While she has a few verified hits under her belt many of the best of these singles were released in promotion of this album. With almost all the material that landed on Clarity  having been released before hand the sound of the record was predictable but nonetheless refreshing. Review By Lavender: It feels like I have been following Kim Petras for far more than just the two years she has been active, on top of this for it being her debut album she has amassed a number of hits and an impressive amount of material to date. Given that I heard almost all of the tracks here before the album was released I had a pretty good sense of what it would end up sounding like and I have to say that a handful of extra tunes round the album out nicely and complete a very solid pop re...

The Black Keys are an Ohio rock duo that emerged in the early 2000's as a youthful and fiery rock act with their blistering 2004 garage rock album Rubber Factory . The band rose from the underground into the rock mainstream with a change in style that saw higher recording quality and clearer mixing on the part of producer Danger Mouse over the course of 4 studio albums from 2008-2014. This included 2010's grammy award winning Brothers , known as the bands breakthrough album into the commercial rock realm as well as the fantastic El Camino  in 2011. The last release from the band came in 2014 with the critically average Turn Blue  and now four years later the duo has returned and chosen to self produce their 9th studio album Let's Rock . Review By Lavender: While The Black Keys have never been an envelope pushing genre defying rock group they do have a long running consistency of making excellent garage rock and contemporary rock. In their underground days they releas...

Poppy is a computer. Review By Lav: I was very surprised by just how much I loved the bright and punchy synth pop of Poppy's debut album Poppy.Computer  and she has failed to let me down since then. She followed that album up quickly with a change of style on her second record, Am I A Girl? . The album achieves compositional density though interpolations of other genres throughout its runtime and if you haven't heard this record you'll probably be surprised to hear everything from ambient music to nu metal is here. But at its core the songwriting was still sharp and with performances so inexorably catchy it was hard to ignore how high Poppy was flying, on the Choke  EP she continues this high standard of songwriting with a short but cherrypicked selection of wonderful tunes. Choke  was the third single for this EP, it's the title track, and the opening song on the record, so fittingly enough it is absolutely excellent. I can't tell you how much I love the h...

Thom Yorke is the long tenured frontman of legendary British rock band Radiohead. He first released solo material in 2006 with the wild electronic experiment The Eraser. Since Eraser there have been three critically acclaimed Radiohead albums, the founding of Thom's group Atoms For Peace and it's full length album Amok , Thom's second solo record Tomorrow's Modern Boxes and his soundtrack to the movie Suspiria . Anima arrives as Thom's first release in 2019 and was dropped on short notice with no singles. Review By Lavender: Thom didn't give me enough time to build up excitement for this release but I most certainly would have. The Eraser is a fantastic and underrated electronic experiment that I consider to be on the same level as the Radiohead album it preceded In Rainbows . Since then I have been less head over heels with Thom's releases aside from Radiohead's masterpiece A Moon Shaped Pool. Atoms For Peace got off to a good start with the Judg...