Lav's Music Corner

The Mountain Goats are a long running California indie rock project of John Darnielle known mostly for their highly conceptual projects like All Hail West Texas  and The Sunset Tree  in the 2000's as well as Beat The Champ  and Goths  in the 2010's. Getting Into Knives  is the 2nd album from the band this year following Songs For Pierre Chuvin  which was released earlier this year when the bands tour was cancelled. Review By Lavender: While I've never been a massive John Darnielle stan I do enjoy a lot of The Mountain Goats music. While All Hail West Texas  has always been a favorite of mine just a few years ago I rekindled with the band on their great record Goths . Since then I haven't been particularly impressed given that their last record let me down a bit and I didn't have much of anything to say about their record from earlier this year. I enjoyed a couple of the singles leading up to Getting Into Knives  that had me excited but ultimately...

Ariana Grande is an artist who turned from a pop star into a mega star over the past few years. With her last two album cycles she's collected numerous #1 hits and translated that success into a massively successful multi-media presence. Unlike many contemporaries who travel the same path Ariana has done so with critical success at her back alongside her commercial success, with her 2019 record thank u, next  in particularly receiving massive critical acclaim across the board, positions  is a relatively quick follow-up for an artist of Ariana's stature and only had one single dropped just a week before the album was ultimately released.  Review By Lavender: I was always a casual appreciator of Ariana's music in her early days but it wasn't until the one-two punch of Sweetener  and thank u, next  that she established herself as one of the best and most capable performers in all of pop music. The prospect of her releasing one of my favorite pop albums of the year ...

PUP is a Toronto based punk band who first received recognition on the back of their 2013 self-titled debut album. Since then the band has released two more records each of which received more attention than the last culminating in last years Morbid Stuff .  Review By Lavender: While straight up punk rock isn't necessarily my go to genre for great music these days I have enjoyed each PUP album more than the last. Leading up to Morbid Stuff  I still wasn't fully convinced of the bands merits but after hearing that record I have to say they are capable of rocking as hard as anybody around right now. After a single from this EP really impressed me I was pretty excited for the project, and while I think every song here is at least decent it is also clear that these are effectively Morbid Stuff  B-Sides. Rot  was a great single and by far my favorite song of the bunch. It's a fiery pop punk rager from start to finish with a melodramatic chorus and short hooky guitar riffs...

Gorillaz are a virtual band that at this point really need no introduction. The project is spearheaded musically by Blur frontman Damon Albarn and visually by artist Jamie Hewlett and have been releasing music for almost 2 decades including some of the most essential fusions of indie, electronica and hip hop of the past 20 years. After releasing one of their least conceptual and most straight forward projects with 2018's The Now Now  the band is returning with a collaboration driven project that featured many singles leading up to its release. Review By Lavender: Like most people on Earth I love the music of Gorillaz. Damon Albarn is responsible for some of my favorite albums of the Brit Pop era and his creativity streak continued through one great Gorillaz record after another. Even on projects that lacked the bands usual poise like Humanz  and The Now Now  there were still plenty of great songs in the mix that showed off the bands consistency and creativity. Throughout ...

Clipping is the experimental rap group consisting of producers William Hutson and Jonathan Snipes alongside rapper Daveed Diggs. The group quickly established themselves as some of the genres most interesting and unique projects with a willingness to indulge in wild experiments and narrative concepts. Their 4th record last year There Existed An Addiction To Blood  was an experiment in horror-rap that came from the bands immense appreciation for horror movies. The appreciation turned out to be deep enough that they produced a whole 2nd albums worth of material under a similar concept, which makes up most of the tracks here on Visions Of Bodies Being Burned .  Review By Lavender: Clipping has been one of the best acts around in any genre for the past decade. Since I started writing about music in 2016 they may be the best act period given how they've monopolized spots on my year end lists as one of only 2 (or kind of 3) artists to ever appear on both the Singles and Songs list...

Autechre are a British electronic music duo who have blended their sound across many different sub-genres of electronica through their 3 decade long career of innovating. In the past few years the band has taken to releasing a pair of incredibly long albums with elseq 1-5  and the nearly twice as long NTS Sessions 1-4 . Sign  is the first conventional and moderately lengthy album from Autechre since 2013's Exai . Review By Lavender: I love many of the most influential IDM artists of the 90's including Autechre. I was excited to finally get to review one of their albums without having to commit 4 or even 8 hours each time I wanted to get through the records material, even I have to say come on at some point. Sign  is actually really the tale of two albums spliced together and mixed around. Half of this record is densely layered, rapid fire IDM and the other half is deeply arranged and distantly mixed pseudo-ambient tracks. Making sense of the order in which these tracks ar...

Dorian Electra is one of the most unique voice's in hyper pop blending genres and tackling gender norms with a uniquely wild and androgynous personality. Dorian's music is just as unique as the numerous singles released leading up to this record often took drastically different sonic approaches and the feature list has names as unpredictable as pop legends The Village People and Russian provocateurs Pussy Riot.  Review By Lavender: If that introduction to Dorian left you head spinning get used to it. I was head over heels for some of the singles from Dorian's first record particularly Career Boy  but the final album felt like a compromise to me. Nothing about My Agenda  feels like a compromise as Dorian clearly threw everything they could possibly find at the wall here regardless of what stuck or didn't. The record blends genres together constantly with the help of some wild guests and paints a surprisingly indulgent narrative all spun around the fedora wearing incel ch...

Open Mike Eagle is a Chicago based rapper and comedian on both television and podcasts. He broke out in the growing experimental rap scene with his 2014 album Dark Comedy  and has since been one of the most critically acclaimed voices in rap with his conscious and comedic style. Review By Lavender: The first time I ever got to review Mike's music was in 2017 when he released what is still to this day my favorite of his projects Brick Body Kids Still Daydream . He followed that up in 2018 with one of my favorite EP's of the year What Happens When I Try To Relax  and has been largely quiet since then aside from a single in 2019 and a feature here and there. Even with some singles that didn't quite blow me away I was excited for this record given Mike's bassline of talent. While it's clear that this record comes from a very different place as his other projects, the incredibly lowkey beats and repetitive hooks can become a serious drag at parts of the album and it'...

James Blake is a British singer-songwriter and electronic music producer who first made waves in the early 2010's with his dubstep parallel experimental electronica. In recent years James has massively widened his audience through high profile collaborations on the Black Panther  album as well as alongside Slowthai, Flatbush Zombies, Kehlani and Beyonce.  Review By Lavender: There was no single artist in the 2010's with a slightly possible exception of Kendrick Lamar, whose output I enjoyed as consistently as James Blake. From his experimental debut to the rich R&B songwriting of Overgrown , the icy DIY of The Colour In Anything  and finally the commercial bliss of Assume Form . James Blake has excited, challenged and amazed me at every single turn of his career up to this point. Giving that just 9 months ago I called his self-titled debut album my second favorite of the entire decade as well as naming his song Retrograde my favorite song of the entire decade I was cl...

Touche Amore are a California post-hardcore band who spent the last ten years releasing one critically acclaimed album after another and peaking with 2016's Stage Four . Lament is the bands third release on Epitaph records and featured a pair of singles that developed significant hype for the project.  Review By Lavender: While I wasn't the earliest adopter of Touche Amore, by the time Stage Four  came around I was certainly on board. I enjoyed the project quite a bit and I've been anticipating a true follow-up ever since. After I enjoyed most of the singles leading up to the record I had pretty significant expectations for the project, and it mostly lives up to them.  Reminders  was the most recent single we heard from the record and while it has a much more conventional chorus than most of these tracks but I have to give the lyricism a ton of credit for putting such raw emotion on display. I also think the instrumental pulls off some pretty diverse transitions well...

Future Islands is a Baltimore based synth pop and indie pop act fronted by Sam Herring who emerged in the early 2010's as one of indie music premiere summer songwriters. The band found mainstream success after a viral performance of their most well known track Seasons  in 2014 and while they have failed to replicate that commercial success since then they still have a dedicated following among indie fans.  Review By Lavender: Future Islands have a discography of singles that can stand up to any of their indie contemporaries. Tracks like Vireo's Eye , Balance , Seasons , Ran  and the newest entry For Sure  are all incredible examples of their sound done to absolute perfection. The issue is that since their 2010 record In Evening Air  the band has failed to put an entire album of great songs together, and the limitations of their sound are just as apparent on As Long As You Are .  For the most part the singles here are once again great tracks with only one ex...

Brian and Roger Eno really need no introduction. Both have spent decades doing soundtrack work as well as their own compositions. And Brian is one of the most respected experimental musicians of all time having basically invented the concept of ambient music alongside an extensive collection of collaborations and solo releases with so many influential artists. There was a lot of talk about this project that sees the two pairing up for what they described as a "musical conversation" that has apparently been worked on for years.  Review By Lavender: Brian Eno really needs no introduction even though he got one. He is one of those artists with such an incredible discography spanning decades and a wide range of genres that when you see his name it's just worth a listen. I was surprised to read that this was the first ever project he and his brother Roger had truly collaborated on and while I didn't get the review out right away, after sitting with the album for a while I...

BLACKPINK are one of the biggest voices in the current wave of genre blending K-Pop groups. Despite having a very slim discography the band has turned heads and achieved major commercial success. After some major collaborations including Lady Gaga, Selena Gomez and Cardi B the group geared up to release The Album , their most definitive statement yet.  Review By Lavender: I haven't done many, if any reviews sharing my thoughts on any of the emerging girl and boy groups coming out of Korea recently, mainly because the sounds are usually so generic and derivative that I didn't have much to say. But Blackpink have always been the exception to that rule. Since their Blackpink  project they have brought an engaging sound through a number of EP's and live projects that had me highly anticipating this statement record. While The Album  is anything but generic, it only goes as far as the girl's personalities do.  This record gets off to an absolutely killer start across its ...

Dirty Projectors are the indie project primarily fronted by David Longstreth who have released three other EP's so far this year. Each EP so far has featured a different primary vocalist and this time around it's keyboardist Kristin Slipp. Review By Lavender: Not only do I love almost all the eras of Dirty Projectors history so far, but I also really enjoyed the first two EP's in this set earlier this year. While the third EP with David Longstreth on vocals disappointed me a bit I was obviously still excited for whatever the band was going to do next. Earth Crisis  is by far the most experimental set of tracks in this EP series so far, with mixed results.  The opening track  Eyes On The Road  is a really strange combination of a short looped instrumental which almost gets kind of haunting and some singing that is quite beautiful even during pitched down passages. The combination is genuinely unsettling and while I feel that's probably what the band was going for i...

YG   is a Compton based rapper who first emerged in 2013 with a contemporary hip hop sound and a few mainstream hits. He changed course with his sophomore record 2016's critically acclaimed Still Brazy  which adopted a 90's g-funk hip hop approach. Since then he has released two more records, each of which took a much more contemporary trap flavored approach. With a few singles leading up to My Life 4Hunnid  he forecasted a transition back to his g-funk sound and generated significant hype in doing so.  Review By Lavender: This is the most excited I've been for a YG album, well ever really. Still Brazy  blindsided me and emerged as one of my favorite rap records of the 2nd half of the 2010's. Since then YG hasn't blown me away with another record even though his most recent release was an improvement over its predecessor. The singles were primarily what made me so excited for this record, not only because they were so good but also because they called back to th...