Lav's Music Corner

Review by Lavender: This one always rubs people the wrong way. I've never been a fan of Fontaines D.C. despite giving the band shot after shot after shot every single time they emerge with new music. That culminated in their third album, 2022's Skinty Fia . After absolutely loving the record's lead single Jackie Down The Line  I thought it was time they finally clicked with me, but when I reviewed the record in full I found it even weaker than their already underwhelming discography so far. It brings me no joy to report that I've been fooled again. I was excited for this record once again based on a single track, the second single and album closer Favourite. It may be my favorite song the band has ever released as they shift their sound into a blissed-out combination of 80s psychedelia and 90s shoegaze. It's so genuinely life-affirming in a way I never expected to hear from the band and I find it completely irresistible. The one thing I'll say for this record is...

Review by Lavender: Sabrina Carpenter may seem like the latest Disney girl turned pop star at first. She arrived on the music scene a few years ago playing opposite to Olivia Rodrigo in a losing game beef over drama that only true pop nerds had to care about. Olivia took that one by a landslide, but in the process of licking her wounds Carpenter also dropped her 2022 album emails i can't send . Ever since separating herself from Olivia, she's become staggeringly more successful with each new release. Nonsense  led into Feather  which led into Espresso , Snort n' Sweet 's lead single and one of the biggest pop hits of the year. Now for the first time in her career, Sabrina Carpenter has the eyes of the entire pop world on her and chose to lean into her casual demeanor and clever but down-to-earth lyricism to try and set herself apart from the crowd.  If you know one thing about Sabrina Carpenter, it's probably Espresso , the song of the summer. I wasn't in love w...

Review By Lavender: Tinashe is an R&B singer who took a while to warm up on me. She spent pretty much the entire 2010s releasing material consistently that occasionally flirted with critical acclaim on moments like 2014's Aquarius . But I didn't really become a Tinashe fan until a few years ago when her absolutely excellent 2021 album 333  caught me by complete surprise. The album was full of slick, infectious, and sensual R&B songs and stood out to me instantly as her best work to date. She followed that up in 2023 with the short but sweet BB/ANG3L  and dropped one of the biggest hits of her entire career Nasty  as the lead single to this new album. Unfortunately, while Quantum Baby  is a decent album, it doesn't fall in line with the momentum she's built up over the past few years.  You don't need me to tell you that Nasty  is an absolute fucking banger. One of the songs of the summer put Tinashe's name back in front of so many people who should h...

These categorizations continue to get stupider and stupider. This time around the name of the game is playful. These 5 bands to varying degrees of rock and pop from post-punk to electro-pop all deliver a pretty playful push and pull that, while nebulous, made sense for me to put together.  Strange Burden  - Font Font are a Texas band that first caught my eye last year when I saw indie blogs hyping up their song It , which I really enjoyed. It also inspired me to listen to their debut single Sentence 1 , which I'll forever be wishing I wasn't so late to. That momentum continued to build into this year with more strong singles and a resulting 30-minute debut album. My favorite of those two follow-up singles was Hey Kekule  a groovy Talking Heads-ish combination of dance rhythms and chimes with a neurotic punk intensity.   The first non-single on the album is the opening track The Golden Calf  a messy and noisy piece of frenetic post-punk. It doesn't star...

After a few impressive weeks in a row, this one is just okay. 5.  booboo  - Yaeji Even though I wasn't completely in love with Yaeji's debut album last year I still think she has immense high-end potential so any time she drops a new song it's an event. That seemed to be the case even more with this love letter to the dancefloor that dropped in the wake of a viral Boiler Room set. The song is admittedly pretty cute and has a charm to it but I can't say it's clicked with me quite as strong as some others beyond an impressively versatile instrumental.  Listen 4.  very little effort - Julie Foregoing the many dozens of puns I could make surrounding the name of this song, I'll just say that Julie is an LA shoegaze band worth keeping your eyes on. Their debut album is dropping later this year and this is the most distinctive they've sounded yet with a pair of vocalists sliding perfectly into the moody demeanor of their fuzzed out haze.  Listen 3.  any means ...

Review by Lavender: Parannoul is a South Korean shoegaze project that caught fire online in 2021 following the release of their sophomore album To See The Next Part Of The Dream . That album hit me like a train, I loved it at the time and it's grown on me even more since then. Luckily Parannoul stays busy which led to an ambient side project and eventually a third record from the band called After The Magic  last year. While I liked the record it didn't deliver the same kind of blistering intensity and uncompromising emotion of its predecessor. But I'm happy to report that Sky Hundred  absolutely does.  While the most striking thing about  To See  is its thunderous sound palette, that isn't the only thing that makes it impactful. The album also features an absolutely brutal lyrical theme of self-depreciation, often to a genuinely painful extent. But even though the language barrier prevents me from understanding the poetry of this record in its full capacity, it...

Review by Lavender: Your Arms Are My Cocoon is kind of the definition of a cult hit. In 2020, the Chicago project spearheaded by Tyler Odom released a self-titled EP consisting of just 6 tracks that stretched only 13 minutes. Now half of those songs sit with more than a million streams on Spotify, as Your Arms Are My Cocoon proved the old axiom that if you make good art people will find it. The project rose from the corners of DIY screamo and skramz Bandcamp scenes to develop an absolutely beloved fanbase in various circles of music discussion online. Now, nearly 4 full years later after multiple extensive tours, the band is back with a full-length debut album.  Let's get this out of the way first,  death of a rabbit  is a deliberately challenging listen that will not be for everyone. This isn't just a screamo record, but an exceedingly lo-fi one that deploys jagged recording, muddy mixing, and blistering screams throughout. But in contrast, those sharp edges are met with...

Was on vacation this week but I'm cooking up plenty of good stuff for the next week, let's do it. 5.  Vanessa  - Midwife If you're familiar with the brooding cloudy slowcore Midwife typically serves up then you basically know what you're getting with Vanessa . Across a full 6-and-a-half minutes Midwife makes use of swaying repetition to slowly weave together an impressively spellbinding cut that will swallow you whole if you give yourself to it.  Listen 4.  Garmonbozia  - Flying Lotus  I think everyone was anticipating a return from Flying Lotus, but I bet most people weren't expecting something like this. He returns by taking over lead vocal duties on a reserved and murky jazz number backed by his usual fluttering electronics. The slow pace and dark demeanor of the song actually plays to his strengths as a vocalist, even if its plodding pace feels a tad dry by FloLo standards.  Listen 3.  Shake It Like A  - Frost Children (feat. Danny Brown)...

After a week where the best new tracks were limited to just a video segment, they're back in written format in addition to the video this week.  5.  Bright Lights  - The Killers Is this a sort of corny heartland rock epic from a band who just seemed like they were past this kind of thing on their surprisingly great last album, yes. But much like the record that preceded it the band continues to prove that being corny absolutely does not prevent you from being good. With nostalgic and life-affirming crescendos this is exactly the kind of song that makes The Killers who they are and they do it expectly.  Listen 4.  Lacking The Ability To Process Empathy  - NAILS If you're familiar with Nails and their history, or you've even just heard some of the other singles from their forthcoming new record, you know what you're getting. The chugging heavy metal riffs drive through a short two-minute composition hardly ever stopping for a second and are accompanied by hef...

Jack White really needs no introduction, but I'll do my best. The Detroit blues rock legend first emerged as the blistering face of The White Stripes, whose 6 albums between 1999 and 2007 are (almost) all great. Since then he's expanded his role into an incredible variety of musical projects. With 5 solo albums under his belt since, he's also formed two other bands, The Raconteurs and The Dead Weather. He's also spread his sound and style as a producer, label head, and surprise guest star on critical darling albums from Beyonce and A Tribe Called Quest.  Now we've arrived at No Name , a clear back-to-basics moment for Jack White. The journey to get here sort of begins with his 2018 album Boarding House Reach . It's surprisingly experimental sound palette turned off some of White's longtime fans, though I'm personally pretty fond of the record. But in 2022 White released two records, an experiment into even more zany electric guitar palettes on Fear Of Th...

Review by Lavender: Jpegmafia is a complicated rapper to follow both artistically and personally. Earlier this year he found himself in hot water, seemingly betraying much of the political righteousness of his early work by cosigning and collaborating with Kanye West. He then doubled down on the controversy with a very poor handling of his interaction with fans on social media. I've also had an up-and-down experience with his music in recent years. After nearly everyone loved his breakthrough album Veteran  in 2018, I seemed to enjoy the follow-up more than most. That switched when Peggy transitioned into his EP  and LP  era where most of his music came off far less exciting to me despite the fact that he continued to rack up critical acclaim. So here we are, fresh off another critical darling with last year's Scaring The Hoes  collaborative album with Danny Brown. What I was looking for most in Peggy's next outing was a continued experimental ambition but one that h...

I love R&B and I've already covered a few releases in the genre this year. But I wanted to catch up with some of the records that fell through the cracks, especially those from artists I've enjoyed in the past.  u made me a st4r  - 4batz Earlier this year a TikTok about videos that don't match the energy of the song they're for launched R&B singer 4batz to virality. While that was built around the smash hit date @ 8 , which I admittedly love, it resulted in some major cosigns for the singer from artists like Drake and Kanye West. He capitalized on the rise to fame with this short project and going into it I was mostly just curious if he would be able to break the mold of his single hit so far. date @ 8  is great with its earworm refrains and pitched-up vocals, but that wasn't going to work for a full 8 songs broken up by a few sparse interludes.  The third single from the album actually served up a potentially interesting scenario. on god?  is a decent t...

Review by Lavender: Porter Robinson is an electronic musician who was elevated to full-on critical darling in the wake of his 2021 album Nurture . While critics fell over themselves to praise the record, I wasn't nearly as in love with it. In fact, it was some of the things that people specifically loved about the album like it's sunny demeanor and nagging pop hooks that really wore me down. After I didn't really care for SMILE 's lead single Cheerleader  I was afraid I would find myself in a similar situation once again. But SMILE is an improvement over its predecessor if for one reason only, songwriting.  Before we get into the ways that songwriting helped heighten the record, let's knock out some of the songs I'm not crazy about. Cheerleader  has some compelling washed-out synths that guide the song into the chorus that are flat-out distracting. But even once you dig into the song underneath it, it's not that compelling. Perfect Pinterest Garden  is a son...