Lav's Music Corner

For this bulky rapid-fire reviews segment I gathered together 5 bands who to varying degrees of commercial success and critical acknowledgment, occupied the blog-driven world of indie and alternative rock in the late 2000s. Many of their contemporaries have fade, but these five are still going strong to extremely varying degrees of success in 2024.  All Hell  - Los Campesinos! Verbose indie-punk outfit Los Campesinos have been quiet with studio albums since 2017, but their presence has never faded. Whether that's due to the many bands who are obviously influenced directly by their vibrant, youthful sound and lyrical snark, or because they dropped an EP a few years ago and some compilation material since then, the band still feels much more relevant than others from their era. I was on board with this new record right out of the gate when I heard the fantastic lead single Feast Of Tongues . It sees the band channeling their righteousness into pinpoint catchy songwriting with nu...

Another ironically long shortlist for the best new tracks of the week this week, but narrowing it down didn't turn out to be all that tricky. 5.  Scarface  - BABii On BABii's second single with Iglooghost and co on board, the princess of electronica delivers on her promise of hard-hitting glitchy beats with sugary singing. It's a combination that won't be a reset for anyone's expectations of what BABii is capable of but a song whose refrains and grinding dance beat are steps ahead of most of her contemporaries.  Listen 4.  Superstar  - Hinds I haven't been crazy about the pop-punky indie rock of Hinds in a while but this track reminds me of why their effortless fun and bottomless wit clicked with me in the first place. It's an attitude-soaked takedown of a local superstar with all the details and snark you'd hope for but the band manages to wrap it up into a catchy and concise package for their best single in years.  Listen 3.  I'VE BEEN EVIL  - S...

Childish Gambino   is an artist whose career has taken him through a dynamic range of sounds and styles. From the humor-laced hip hop of the still solid Because The Internet  to the Funkadelic soul of the excellent Awaken My Love , calling Gambino a "rapper" has been increasingly inadequate of a classification as the years go by. Earlier this year Gambino shares ATAVISTA , a finished, and marginally improved version of his divisive 2020 album. But that merely set the table to Bando Stone,  which has been marketed as the "final" Childish Gambino album.  To be completely honest, I think the Bando Stone  era got off to a great start. Lead single Lithonia  is easily the best song here and that was obvious to me from the very first time I heard it. It piles one catchy refrain after another on top of a roaring rock instrumental to great results. He also shared In The Night  which is a pretty nice song that gets solid contributions from Amaarae and Jorja Smit...

If there's one type of artist I've had trouble with consistently in the past, it's the beloved indie-pop girl. Plenty of artists, usually but not always championed by cis lesbian women, that haven't clicked with me in the same way. From Mikski in 2018 to the various boygenius members at points throughout each of their careers, I've taken a lot of shit online from singer-songwriter fans. So I picked out some of those exact kinds of artists who dropped new albums this year to give them another go round and see if they click with me anymore this time.  Charm  - Clairo First up is Clairo, whose now beloved 2019 debut album still does absolutely nothing for me. I thought her Jack Antonoff-produced sophomore record was an improvement, though it still missed my end-of-the-year list, and I include a full 100 albums. This time around she's traded out Antonoff for Leon Michels, who absolutely dazzled me last year alongside Black Thought on their collaborative effort Glori...

5.  Kitsune Maison Freestyle  - Porter Robinson This was basically a shoo-in after Porter told me he thought I had a very nice aura and gave me Virtual Self  merch at a pop-up earlier this week. But for the record I also think this is my second favorite of all his new singles so far and the hook has been stuck in my head on a loop since I first heard the original tease of the song.  Listen 4.  CLASSIC THEME - SBTRKT Given how strongly my negative feelings towards the new SBTRKT album last year were it's kind of shocking how much I've enjoyed the run of singles from this year, This new 6-minute cut sneaks onto the list in an admittedly pretty shallow week but the fact that I like yet another one of these leftover cuts is both surprising but honestly refreshing from the veteran dance music outfit.  Listen 3.  Skin On Skin  - Jasmine 4.t The newest member of Phoebe Bridgers' Saddest Factory is off to an extremely hot start with the label. Skin On Ski...

Review by Lav: Earlier this decade Cassandra Jenkins blindsided me. I wasn't familiar with her music before critical praise started to flood in for her album An Overview On Phenomenal Nature  in 2021. I completely fell in love with the record when I first heard it and I gave it a positive review, eventually even getting to interview Cassandra. So to say I was excited about this follow-up would be an understatement, especially after multiple singles I really enjoyed. What Cassandra serves up on My Light  continues the fragile, touching serenity of its predecessor and proves that even adding some muscle on top can't break her stride.  Though I wasn't head over heels for the album's lead single, each new release was a major step up. Delphinium Blue  served as the second single and I like it a LOT. It displays the patience and gentle touch of Cassandra at her best and I absolutely love the vocalizations she uses to transition between passages. It's such a fragile, gentl...

Last year I covered some of the biggest releases in rap music from the boys in one big rapid fire review. Now, the women have been throwing out some of the most notable moments of the year so let's dig into what they have to offer. MEGAN  - Megan Thee Stallion I like Megan Thee Stallion a lot but it isn't because of the quality of her projects. Calling someone a "singles artist" is deeply patronizing but there isn't really another way to explain why Megan has so many amazing songs and no full projects that I can say I genuinely enjoy. Savage , Thot Shit , Hot Girl Summer , Plan B , these are the kind of songs that launched her to fame, and yet all of the projects they landed on were muddled messes with as many bad ideas as good ones. That could have even been the case with this record, which featured one single in particular, the lethal diss track and opener HISS , that I absolutely love. Unfortunately though, MEGAN  has some of the same pitfalls that have plagued...

Review by Lavender: Zach Bryan is one of the most interesting artists operating in country music today. He had his breakthrough in 2022 when his spectacular single Something In The Orange  became a surprise chart hit. That single landed on a massive album 34-song album with over two hours of material. He followed it up last year with his more conventional-length self-titled album and has now circled back once again with 19 songs that make up a full new hour of material. While his work ethic is undeniably impressive, I was curious whether or not he would be able to maintain his consistency as a songwriter. As it turns out he has no trouble at all.  With 19 songs that largely exist inside the same mold, fusing together elements of country and folk, there are bound to be some tracks that don't hold up as well. Surprisingly it's some of the songs with featured guests that come up the shortest when you'd think they'd be the ones adding variety. Purple Gas  is a fine song th...

5.  Gold Coast  - Moses Sumney Moses Sumney's immense talent has persisted through basically everything he's ever done. That's why it's nos surprise that he once again delivered a hit on a second consecutive single. With  Gold Coast  he dials things back a bit with a near whispered tenor met by some fluttering strings. But underneath it all the track is still a beautiful, swaying and irresistibly elegant R&B jam.  Listen 4.  Electra  - Public Service Broadcasting The incredibly strange career of Public Service Broadcasting has taken the sample-driven and largely instrumental rock outfit to all kinds of strange places. But this time they're going back to something we all know they can do well, a song about a plane. Much like one of their breakthrough tunes  Spitfire ,  Electra  is a beautiful and fittingly soaring tribute to aircraft that comes with all their emotional instrumental poise and perfectly selected samples.  Listen 3....

Review by Lav:  Jelly Diver is an electronic music project that debuted last year and fuses the frenetic pacing of genres like breakcore and jungle with the cloudy nostalgia of retro video game soundtracks. The debut album from Jelly Diver cybercrystals  arrived back in April but in line with a rapid-fire series of new releases dating back to last year, more music arrived in a hurry. To quote the Instagram post announcing this new EP, it began as an attempt to "simplify the formula," but ended up "devolving into madness," a promise that the project more than makes good on.  That isn't to say that the music here is ever necessarily simple. Opener dotonbori   dreams  is somewhat chaotic right out of the gate. It kicks the record off with stuttering breakcore drums contrasted by distant dreamy synths. It bounces between moments seeped in the contrast of hazy and precise, though they're intercut with stranger passages where the backing chorus of synths fade out ...

Review by Lavender: Uboa is the noise project of Australian artist Xandra Metcalfe whose music has often attacked gender dysphoria and the machinations of being trans both in society and in your own mind through blistering noise music. That formula reached its apex on the 2019 album The Origin Of My Depression  one of the rawest and most uncompromising portrayals of gender dysphoria, depression, and self-doubt I've ever heard. I poured out love for the album when it dropped and did the same thing the following year with the EP that followed it up. I've been highly anticipating whatever Uboa did next ever since, which is why the surprise dropping of Impossible Light  was such an overwhelming delight.  In the promotional material for this record, Uboa painted its whims in surprisingly optimistic language. But even though the album is ultimately about seeing a path forward, that doesn't mean the journey it takes to get there is easy. Opener Phthalates  is a brooding sta...

Rounding out the first half of the year I'm looking back and covering some bands that got major attention from either critics, music fans, or both.  Diamond Jubilee  - Cindy Lee One of the biggest surprises of 2024 was the emergence of massive critical acclaim for Cindy Lee and Diamond Jubilee . The project spawns out of the complicated journey of late 2000s indie rock outfit Women. While various members of the band broke off and formed Viet Cong, a group that would eventually change their name to Preoccupations and receive critical acclaim in the decade that followed, frontman Patrick Fiegel spawned this drag-oriented pop outfit that never quite reached the same level of acclaim. But now with the project's 7th album, which is still yet to be released on streaming services, that hype has arrived. I went into Diamond Jubilee  having only sparingly heard other albums from the project like What's Tonight To Eternity  and Act Of Tenderness . But in this two-hour epic of ...