Lav's Music Corner

Tune-Yards are a California based indie group who are now more than a decade into their career. They received massive critical acclaim for their 2nd and 3rd albums in 2011 and 2014 which brought a unique style combining up-beat and often unconventional indie instrumentation with African beat music influences and of course frontwoman Merrill Gabriel's unique vocals. The band made use of dizzying compositions and dense vocal layering to create an incredibly unique sound in the world of modern indie and after briefly dipping their toes into the world of film soundtracks in 2019, are back with their 5th studio album. Review By Lav: I love Tune Yards. I listed their album w h o k i l l  as one of my 50 favorite of 2011 just a few weeks ago and I will surely do the same with Nikki Nack  if the world is still turning in 2024. I wrote a pretty positive review of the bands 4th album I Can Feel You Creep Into My Private Life  back in 2018 and while I may have soured on some of the ...

Death From Above 1979 is a Canadian duo who first emerged in the 2000's with a quintessential debut rock album on 2004's You're A Woman, I'm A Machine . After a nearly decade long hiatus the band returned in 2014 with a long awaited follow-up and have expanded that into two more albums since, culminating in the bands fittingly titled 4th album Is 4 Lovers . Review By Lav: DFA's debut album is a modern rock classic just as bonified as some of their contemporaries best work of the 2000's era. While they may not get the credit they deserve since they quickly faded out of the public consciousness I was excited to see the band return once I had become a more conscious listener by 2014. As it turns out it was the bands 3rd album 2017's Outrage Is Now  that proved to be the bands true return to form delivering loud, focused and instantly catchy rock music from start to finish. I was wondering if the band would commit to some kind of new direction and the love song ...

Parannoul is an anonymous Korean artist who began attracting tons of attention in online music circles in the month after this record came out. While it is technically his 2nd record it is the first many have heard of his lo-fi bedroom blend of shoegaze and indie music sounds with classic emo lyricism.  Review By Lav: This record has become the first real underground darling of 2021 so far when it first emerged about a month ago with no real press or attention to speak of. Since then I've seen it emerge on music sites and be discussed by indie fans and I was hoping to wait until the record was released on streaming services to talk about it. Unfortunately it looks like that isn't going to happen any time soon so I figured I should go ahead and jump on the bandwagon and talk about the record. While that phraseology may make it seem like this was some kind of chore or obligation I assure you it isn't, To See The Next Part Of The Dream  is easily one of the best records I'...

I just released a new video on the Music Corner YouTube channel where I count down my 50 favorite albums that are turning 10 years old this year, check it out below. 

Justin Bieber is an obviously high profile artist whose contributions have been hard to miss over the last 15 years of the music industry. After an extended absence from studio albums during which he released a number of incredibly successful singles he returned with last years critically maligned but commercially successful Changes . After a trio of singles managed to once again be hits earlier this year Justin is now gearing up for another record barely a year later that represents a sonic and thematic change of pace for him.  Review By Lav: I like Justin Bieber and I think that he's probably a cooler and more genuine person that people often give him credit for. That being said I've never been a huge fan of his music with a couple of singles standing out as highlights but not many of what I would consider to be worthwhile albums. I was particularly let down by last years Changes  which felt like Bieber making more generic and less interesting music than ever before, but I w...

Show Me The Body is a New York hardcore band who first turned heads in 2016 with their raw, explosive debut album Body War . The group has proven a remarkable versatility for executing a number of hardcore styles across their career and the unpredictability is a core element of their sound.  Review By Lav: I haven't kept up with Show Me The Body as much as I should have in the years since their debut, while I did hear all the music they released I didn't get around to reviewing any of them and I wish I had. Now that the band appears to be back in full swing starting with this EP I had some catching up to do and I'm glad I did. These three tracks are versatile, explosive and unconventional in a way that keeps me on my toes even when the performances don't necessarily do it on their own.  Rubberband  is up first and its an absolutely sludgy blur of heavy instrumentation to kick the EP off. It features industrial drumming and heavy distorted slurring guitars that eventuall...

Lana Del Rey is the caliber of pop star who really needs no introduction. She first emerged with a hugely successful album full of hit singles on her 2012 debut Born To Die  and in the decade since has been responsible for numerous critically acclaimed albums culminating in 2019's Norman Fucking Rockwell . Review By Lav: It's no secret that I've dished out quite a bit of critical acclaim in Lana's direction over the years. I called Born To Die  one of my favorite pop albums of the decade last year, I wrote a very positive review for Lana's spoken word album Violet Bent Backwards Over The Grass  and the most recent 10/10 review to that I've given was back in 2019 to my eventual album of the year, Norman Fucking Rockwell . Given her versatility as a singer and a creative as well as her strong cast of collaborators and rewarding songwriting there is always reason to be excited about what Lana is doing next. Turns out Chemtrails  is Lana's most stark effort yet ...

Selena Gomez is a former Disney child star and pop singer who at this point needs no real introduction. While never truly being an essential piece of the pop music sphere she has been a viable prescence for over a decade and is only now on this EP releasing an entire Spanish language project. With the singles leading up to the EP she projected not only a change in language but also a change in sound with her pop approach pulling much more from reggaetón and latin music than ever before.  Review By Lav: Even though I've never been a huge fan of Selena Gomez musically I do like her personality and accompanying visuals quite a bit and its enough for me to always keep a casual eye on whatever she's doing. I was really happy to see her releasing music entirely in Spanish especially after how well it worked for Kali Uchis just last year. And while I am just as mixed on the EP as I have been for pretty much Selena's entire discography it does feel like a key step in her defining h...

This is a collaborative album that I was looking forward too given the pair of names attached to it. Both Blake and Pino have done most of their work in the music industry from behind the scenes with Pino in particular playing bass on a ridiculously stacked amount of legendary projects over the years. Given that Blake has completely blown me away with his production and arrangements on the last two Perfume Genius records I was excited for what the pair was going to bring. Notes With Attachments  is a strange series of instrumental compositions with a wide variety of instrumentation that is unafraid to be unconventional throughout.  The first leg of the record makes liberal use of a horn section which I didn't anticipate, but rarely do they sound like a conventional execution of the sound. Soundwalk  has quite the unpredictable arrangement of keys and brass. It sounds like one of those YouTube videos where they take a song and put the beats out of order because everyt...

The Horrors are a British post-punk and goth rock band who first broke out in the late 2000's on the back of their critically acclaimed sophomore album Primary Colours . Since then the band has transitioned their sound for numerous new eras landing on a heavier more electronic rock sound on 2017's V , and positioning an even deeper dive into industrial sounds on this EP. Review By Lav: I love The Horrors, that's no secret. From relentlessly praising their modern post-punk revivalist classic Primary Colours  to writing a glowing review of V  early on in the blog's history. Coming off their 5th studio album which featured such a refreshing and youthful sound for a band more than a decade into their career, I was really excited for what the band was going to do next and they didn't let me down. Despite being only 3 tracks and barely over 10 minutes Lout  works as a proof of concept for a potentially experimental industrial rock direction for the group going forward.  T...

Given the obvious fact that my tastes in indie run on the more experimental side, I usually miss some of the more acclaimed releases in the genre from artists that have never really interested me before or artists whose early songs never stood out much or even showed up on my radar at all. So I decided to catch up on some indie darlings from the first few months of the year each of which remind me of music my old roommate Sofia really loved so shoutout to her, I'm sure she would give all these records higher scores than I did.  Ignorance - The Weather Station The Weather Station is a folk project fronted by Tamara Lindeman who have been going strong for over a decade now. I heard the self-titled project she dropped a few years ago but never got around to reviewing it since it sounded so much like all the other folk inspired singer-songwriter music out there. While that is definitely the case once again on Ignorance  there are quite a few improvements from a songwriting and per...

Cassandra Jenkins is a Brooklyn singer-songwriter who first attracted the attention of the indie music scene with her debut album Pay Till You Win  in 2017. Since then she has released singles and live albums sparsely over the year before ultimately returning with her Josh Kaufman produced sophomore album on Overview .  Review By Lav: Until a few weeks ago I had no idea who Cassandra Jenkins was and I hadn't hear her debut album. But after seeing a couple of very positive reviews for this record and noticing the most Brooklyn thing possible, that Josh Kaufmann produced the record, I decided to give it a shot. While Kaufmann is perhaps most known for his production work with Craig Finn's The Hold Steady, I was really interested to see the sonic approach he would contribute to a singer-songwriter record. As soon as I turned this record on what makes it special was instantly apparent to me and with how much enjoyment I've derived from it I only wish I had been aware of Cassand...

Julien Baker is a Tennessee based singer-songwriter who first emerged in 2015 with a breakout debut album Sprained Ankle . She followed this up with a critically acclaimed sophomore album and as a member of the indie supergroup Boygenius with Lucy Dacus and Phoebe Bridgers. This collaboration explains the uncharacteristic 4 year gap between studio album releases that has lead to Little Oblivions . Review By Lav: While I enjoyed the versatility and creativity put on display on the short but incredibly sweet Boygenius  project I haven't been quite as in love with Julien's solo work. While 2017's Turn Out The Lights  was an improvement I saw Julien Baker as merely above average prescence in the incredibly saturated world of singer-songwriter music. While she is no doubt a gifted lyricist I feel like her music so often falls into the same painfully generic tropes of the genre. I heard a few singles that didn't get me particularly excited for the record as a whole, but now t...

The first collection of rapid fire review of 2021 comes from a collection of hip hop collaborations that unfortunately I didn't get around to reviewing earlier in the year. Some of the projects are short and some are from very prolific release series but they all were worth commenting on before the year got too far along. Your Old Droog/Tha God Fahim - Tha Wolf On Wall St While this is a short outing from the pair of underground MC's at just 27 minutes I like it quite a bit. The beats are interesting some of them are more conventional lowkey hip hop outings but there are a few really interesting instrumentals in the mix as well. Droog is his typical blend of stone-faced and confident and Fahim mostly keeps up with the exception of a track or two where he shows off rhyme schemes that feel below his pen game. The record features numerous slick interpolations of sampled vocals that I find super interesting as the transitions between songs and only really has one or two beats that ...

King Gizzard And The Lizard Wizard are one of the definitive bands in the contemporary Australian psych rock scene who have been prolifically releasing sonically diverse concept albums over the past decade. L.W.  is the sister album to last years K.G.  and they both follow in the footsteps of some of the bands earlier experiments in microtonal tuning.  Review By Lav: Generally I would consider myself a big fan of King Gizz and they even have a number of albums that I absolutely love. Unfortunately the experiments in microtonal desert rock have no been among my favorites. The bands first adventure into this sound was 2017's Flying Microtonal Banana  may have been my least favorite of their famous 5 albums released that year. They followed it up with last years K.G.  which similarly underwhelmed me and left me hoping that the band would be going in a drastically different direction next. Obviously that isn't the case but I still went into L.W.  with an open m...

Nick Cave & Warren Ellis are a singer/songwriter and composer respectively who have been a part of the legendary indie music project Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds for decades. While this is their first official collaboration under their own names they have worked together closely particularly on the previous trilogy of Bad Seeds albums over the last decade, each of which have some level of sonic connection to Carnage . Review By Lav: While I'm obviously a fan of Nick Cave and many of The Bad Seeds records over their nearly 40 year career, I'm not quite as die hard a fan as some of their most dedicated and studious followers. That being said I did enjoy both of the previous Bad Seeds albums with 2017's somber and harrowing Skeleton Tree  being one of my favorite projects from the group in decades. Given that this was a surprise drop I didn't have much time or any singles to set my expectations for the project and ultimately I'm glad, because the highlights here a...