Lav's Music Corner

JPEGMAFIA & Danny Brown are two of the most acclaimed and unique artists in the modern underground hip-hop scene. Danny broke out in the early 2010s before building up to one of the decade's most acclaimed rap albums Atrocity Exhibition  in 2016. Peggy on the other hand crashed into the music world with his 2018 album Veteran  which received massive acclaim for its unique compositional style and energetic performances. Now the pair are linking up for a project that has already become one of the most anticipated in all of rap this year despite just being announced a few weeks ago.  Review by Lav: So here we are. After years of rumors and speculation, the long-awaited Danny and Peggy collab has finally arrived and it's themed specifically around the pair leaning into what so many of their biggest fans love about them. Given how talented both artists are I was expecting nothing less than fireworks and ultimately, that's what we got. Before I get to the elements of the re...

Lana Del Rey is an artist who really needs no introduction at this point. The pop auteur has spent over a decade growing a distinctive brand of mature nostalgic pop music infused with her irresistible personality and flare. After releasing what was essentially a B-sides collection in Blue Banisters  quickly after her critical smash Chemtrails Over The Country Club  in 2021, Tunnel  is Lana's 9th official album. Review by Lav: My love for Lana Del Rey's music is the worst-kept secret I have on this blog. From the relentless praise I've dished out to her music as it's been released and even the various nods I've given to her discography before I began reviewing it should be clear to just about everyone that she's one of my favorite artists around. That's why after three amazing singles I was pretty much expecting this to be one of my favorite albums of the year. At the end of the day Tunnel  is a very good record, maybe the best I've heard so far this year...

5.  WE GOT THE JAZZ  - Moor Mother While Moor Mother's songs still don't necessarily work as the best singles in the world, this first taste of her upcoming deluxe version of last year's great Jazz Codes  proves that the well of creativity ran even deeper than I thought. It's once again an indulgent but extremely impressive performance clearly surrounded by talented musicianship on all sides.  Listen 4.  Paradise Is Mine  - Swans Even having never been the biggest Swans fan in the world I can certainly find plenty to like about this song. I love the combination of some hellish sounds that are placed sparsely enough to not completely overtake the song. I appreciate the methodical repetition which sort of heightens the song's energy and even if it once again feels like it's on the more indulgent side than I would have personally made, it's kind of the band's style at this point.  Listen 3.  TV In The Gas Pump  - Wednesday The 4th single from th...

My short review of the new 100 Gecs album is available alongside a number of others as part of a Ringtone Magazine feature about the album here <3

M83 are a French electronica and rock project who have spent the past 20 years building out a diverse catalog of music including sounds of synth pop, shoegaze, electronica, and ambient into both dense compositions and simpler pop songs. Review by Lav: I love M83. While almost everyone agrees on the merit of their most acclaimed and successful project, 2011's Hurry Up, We're Dreaming , the trio of albums they released in the lead-up make for one of the best musical runs of the 2000s. Unfortunately, the only M83 album I've actually had the pleasure of covering as a critic is the one that almost everyone agrees is their worst, 2016's Junk . Despite the 7-year gap in releases, I was still incredibly excited for what M83 would deliver in their next offering. While I'm mostly positive about what they deliver on Fantasy  I can also say that a bit of editing and trimming down could have made an even better project out of this. Some of the reasons I like this album were exac...

5.  Fatal Attraction  - 6LACK After I was split on the first two singles from this new album more of my hopes than I'd like to admit rested on this song and I kind of came down in the middle. 6LACK is still a very compelling performer and I like the wavy spaced-out production on this song quite a bit. The problem is almost everything here from the lyrical content, to the piano refrain, and even the hook itself feels really standard and arguably overdone. It's a track that fails to excite me like a single should but would make a fine deep cut. Listen 4.  Lean Beef Patty  - Danny Brown & Jpegmafia The first offering from one of the most highly anticipated rap crossovers in years is a short offering that feels MUCH more like Peggy than Danny with it's blown out bass and chaotic changes in style. Even if it feels more like a 2-minute bar fest than an actual song these two are still undeniably compelling performers and it shows in the intensity they can put behind eve...

Miley Cyrus is one of the biggest superstars in all of music and has been for well over a decade. After getting her start as a child star then turning towards a more mature and adult sound she has shifted her musical style quite a bit in the past few years going from a psych-pop collaboration with The Flaming Lips, a return to her country roots, a briefly hip-hop inspired phase, an 80s rock throwback album and finally settling on some more regular old pop music with Endless Summer Vacation . Review by Lav: This is gonna be a quick one. Despite this era launching with Flowers  a single I admittedly like quite a bit, the deep cuts of this record have all the hallmarks of cringey attitude and thin songwriting that Miley has struggled with for her entire career.  Aside from Flowers  the first half of this record is a pretty rough listen. Jaded  has a decently twinkly instrumental but the hook is completely flat with stretched out sullables that sap all the momentum out o...

R&B is one of my favorite genres out there, but it's a deep well. Pretty much every year I end up with a log of records in the genre that I've heard but haven't found the time to review properly. I'm trying to get ahead of that this year even though I know it'll happen again. My 21st Century Blues  - Raye I was pretty interested in this record both because I'm a chart watcher and Raye's pretty good collaboration with 070 Shake Escapism  had been a late riser up the Hot 100 last year and also just because she's a name I've been hearing about for a while now and it seems like it took her a long time to finally get this album released. Now that her full debut project is here I can see exactly why she's been one of the industry's secret superstars in the making for the past few years because My 21st Century Blues  displays IMMENSE potential. One of the things that make the record so exciting is Raye's versatility. A song like Hard Out Her...

Fever Ray is the solo project of Swedish musician Karin Dreijer who is most well known as one half of electronica duo The Knife alongside their brother. While it's been 10 years since The Knife last released new music Fever Ray released their second solo album back in 2017. Fans were excited for Radical Romantics  not only because Karin was returning to releasing new music, but also Olaf Dreijer, the other half of The Knife, is returning with production and songwriting on many of these tracks. Review by Lav: With a recent video I've been working on covering the best albums of 2013 and the great trio of singles Karin has released dating back to last year, I've rekindled my love for The Knife. Revisiting some of their old material that I've always loved and hearing these new songs gave me expectations for this record that I felt might be a bit much. Turns out I was wrong because this is seriously a wonderful listen that sees Karin not only writing phenomenally catchy tune...

5.  Talkback  - 6lack Even if using the same Sting sample as Lucid Dreams  only a few years after it was a smash hit is a bold idea I also think this might be my favorite 6lack song in quite a while. All of his swagger as a performer and versatility between singing and rapping comes through to make the song pretty irresistible. You basically know what you're getting with this one but that's not a complaint.  Listen 4.  Failed At Math(s)  - Panchiko A few years ago I would have never believed we would get Panchiko reunited and recording new music but here it is. While their new single didn't exactly blow me away it did something just as important, maintained some of the stylistic motifs of the music that broke the band through in the first place even though it's been over 20 years since then.  Listen 3.  My Cosmos Is Mine  - Depeche Mode This might be the darkest new Depeche Mode song in a while at least in terms of soundplay and I actually li...

Slowthai is a British rapper who also dabbles in the styles of punk with his screamed vocals and distorted arrays of instrumentation. After his first album Nothing Great About Britain  took on heavy political and societal themes he shifted the focus on 2020s Tyron  a double LP that paired some of his normal bangers with some much more emotional and introspective songs on the second half. UGLY  is a follow-up to that second half of Tyron , but applying that introspection to a much wider array of aesthetics. Review by Lav: While I did give Tyron  a positive review when it came out, I can't say I was ever in love with the album and I'm not sure it's aged as gracefully as I had anticipated. These days I'm still much more likely to recommend Slowthai's debut, which is why I was a bit nervous to hear that this record was dipping into that more personal side of things, even though that half of Tyron  was generally much more consistent than it's first. Even though this ...

Kali Uchis is a versatile Columbian-American singer whose blends together R&B and pop with classic influences from the worlds of jazz and soul and even splashes of latin music worked in. Her impressive fusion of styles led to her breakout success as a featured artist in the early 2010s and led to her massively acclaimed debut album Isolation  in 2018. In 2021 she scored the biggest hit of her career so far with the tik tok fueled smash telepatia  and is following it up with Red Moon In Venus  the first of two albums she promised for 2023. Review by Lav: It's impossible not to like Kali Uchis. She's a wonderful singer with a blend of styles that has something for everyone and a list of collaborators that includes as much talent as anybody. Even if I wasn't in love with her second album nearly as much as her first it still had some massive highlights and I'm not the least bit surprised that it led her to have a big hit. I had no reason to expect anything but another g...

Real Cultural Shit  EP - Channel Tres Channel Tres is an artist I've been trying to get into for a long time because a lot of my friends who are more casual about their music diets absolutely adore him. Despite that, I never really found much in either of his studio albums or even his essential 2018 self-titled EP. But that didn't mean I was going to give up on his sound, primarily because I've seen some pretty overwhelming praise sent the way of his single 6am  which appears on this EP. One thing I will say for this record is I think the quality of the instrumentals has improved. Channel Tres has always been a genre-blurring project and there are elements of dance, funk, soul, and even some pop and electronica in the mix here but I think they sound better than on previous projects. Unfortunately, I think too many of these songs fails to stick the landing compositionally, delivering about one tik tok's worth of catchy refrains before playing it out in a very awkward way...

Xiu Xiu is the long-running experimental music project fronted by Jamie Stewart. The band has long had a devout following in the critical underground, which was strengthened off the back of a run of acclaimed projects from 2016-2019. After releasing an album centered around collaborative efforts in 2021, the band is back with their 13th album, Ignore Grief . Review by Lav: In the years since I first gave a glowing review to Xiu Xiu's 2019 album Girl With Basket Of Fruit  I've grown even fonder of one of the scariest albums I've ever heard and one of my favorite experimental releases of the entire 2010s. After OH NO , which felt like more of a themed project that saw Xiu Xiu collaborating with dozens of talented musicians but losing some of the conceptuality and uniquely haunting poise of their best work, I was excited for this to be a proper follow-up to Girl . What Ignore Grief  actually does is less about demanding comparisons to its predecessors and more about challengin...

5.  Worms  - Ashnikko I can see this not going over well since on the surface this song is a pretty severe aesthetic mismatch with lyrics that don't seem to particularly add up to anything and a plucked bassline placed precariously over a rattling trap beat. Once I gave myself into the theme of the song, having brain worms, it's sonic clashes started to click with me a bit more. Whether this will hold up will be put to the test on the album but I see the potential in what Ashnikko is going for here more than on the first single.  Listen 4.  Since I Have A Lover  - 6LACK The decision to switch from darker, moodier R&B to something brighter and even a bit indie flavored was one I didn't understand at first but it did grow on me ever so slightly. Maybe it's just that I'm so excited for 6LACK to be back but some of the things that normally bother me on songs like the weak hook or the track just bowing out completely out of nowhere at the end didn't really dampen...

Shame are an English post-punk act who got their debut out in 2018 before the genre fully exploded in the years since with a number of bands being drowned in critical acclaim. Their sophomore album Drunk Tank Pink  in 2021 felt the benefit of that wave as they were covered alongside bands like Black Country, New Road, Squid, Black Midi, and Dry Cleaning. Food For Worms  was teased with a trio of singles released starting last year that projected an advancing of the band's sonic influences.  Review by Lav: While I wasn't crazy about the debut shame album and it was kind of a surprise to me how much it took off, I think they took a BIG step forward with their sophomore album Drunk Tank Pink . I was pretty positive in my coverage but I think I like the album even more than I was able to say at the time, which had me particularly excited for this record. While I'm not quite as crazy about Food For Worms , it sees that band expanding the scope of their sound in a way that has ...

ULTRA PARADISE  - Angel Electronics Angel Electronics is a new music project from Black Dresses' Ada Rook and collaborator Ash Nerve. Putting the album into genre categories is exceedingly difficult as it blends pop punky refrains and sentiments with layering of screamo vocals and crushing metal guitars. Of course, as you'd expect there's also a thick electronic haze over everything and a vast array of synth leads heard across the record. So yeah, it's a bit of a whirlwind but that chaos is clearly on purpose and it keeps you from ever knowing where the album will go next. One thing I absolutely didn't expect this record to be was cute, but it's insanely cute. Not only are the sentiments here often overwhelmingly lovely but they're also played with an angsty pop-punk sentiment that is pulled off earnestly. Highlights like Party Girl  and One Thousand And One Nights  are genuinely adorable songs that if played only slightly less chaotic would be the kind of t...