Lav's Music Corner

Review by Lavender: Jamie xx is a writer, producer, and electronic musician who first rose to fame as a member of indie pop outfit The xx. In 2015, he released his first solo album In Colour , which was a massive critical darling for its blend of dance and electronic styles and impressive roster of collaborators. It's been 9 years then and yet it feels like In Waves  picks up right where the previous album left off. After a series of strong singles, Jamie xx has delivered another slice of absolutely excellent electronica that reinforces itself and features one highlight after another.  A surprising half of this album's tracklist dropped as singles in advance of it's release and there really isn't a miss in the bunch. A track like Treat Each Other Right  may not have exactly blown me away at first but its impact on the record is enormous. It comes after the instrumental intro track Wanna  which sets up the punchy beat underneath perfectly. The other single that didn'...

Review by Lavender: Colin Stetson is a saxophonist whose experimental compositions have soundtracked some of the definitive horror movies of the past 10 years, while he's spent nearly twice that time collaborating with a wide variety of acclaimed artists. Simultaneously he's been releasing solo albums of his uncompromising sound. The newest is The love it took to leave you  his first purely solo recording since 2017's All This I Do For Glory . It also follows last year's standout When we were that what wept for the sea , one of my favorite of Stetson's projects to date.  Coming into this album I was pretty excited based on both Colin's reputation and the two singles. Opener and title track The love it took to leave you  didn't blow me away at first but it's at its best serving as a table setter for the album. It's got a surprisingly methodical undertone pacing away while bizarre and blurry sax passages wander over top of it. That leads perfectly into...

Some major announcements this week didn't dissuade from a few surprising names landing on the list. Enjoy <3 5.  Nail In A Wooden Trunk  - Tapir! Earlier this year Tapir! dropped one of my favorite debut albums of 2024 so far and though I wasn't crazy abotu their first follow-up single, this song reminds me of EXACTLY why I like them so much. From its subtle instrumental versatility to its rustic sound palette to an understated but still truly bizarre vocal performance that's been stuck in my head all week. This is another hit from Tapir. Listen 4.  No Comma  - Slayyyter A classic Slayyyter banger for 2024. After an album that felt like a bit of an experiment wandering away from her pummeling pop swagger she's back with a song that feels like it could have slipped into her early mixtape. This song is even better when you realize it's a slight subversion of the kind of expectations Slayyyter often faces. She manages to even make being less slutty than her reputati...

Review by Lavender: Porches are a synth-pop outfit that have been at it for over a decade now. Shirt  is the project's 6th album and first since 2021. I didn't cover the bands previous outing as I didn't really have much to say about it in the same way I do for records like 2020's Ricky Music  and 2016's Pool . But with some of the singles released in the lead up to Shirt  really grabbing my attention, I was excited to dig into what the record had to offer. Those singles really are a great bunch that pop up around the middle of the record. Rag  came first and it single-handedly spiked my attention for the record when it dropped. I think it's one of my favorite Porches tracks ever the way the meandering verses jangle back and forth just for the song to erupt into a killer hook is perfect. That track is also the very definition of playing it cool which Porches has always done well.  Joker  came next and I have no fucking idea what the point of any of the lyri...

Review by Lavender: Foxing are an emo band from St. Louis, or at least they were at the start of their tenure. 10 years ago they released an album hailed by many as a modern classic of the genre, but since then they've wandered in all kinds of different stylistic directions. Unfortunately, I haven't been nearly as crazy about any of the material that followed. That culminated in 2021's arena-rocky mess Draw Down The Moon  which I didn't particularly care for. But after the band announced a shift away from labels entirely with their self-titled 5th album and followed it up with two kick-ass singles, I was pretty excited to see what they delivered.  Let's talk singles first. I likely wouldn't even be talking about this album right now if not for Greyhound  the lead single that left me floored. For what it's worth Foxing aren't a band that I'm specifically expecting to be very playful with composition so the fact that they stretch this into a full 8-min...

Review by Lav: Nilufer Yanya is a British singer-songwriter who first caught my attention when the singles for her sophomore album Painless  began to make the rounds online in 2022. While I wasn't head-over-heels for the resulting record at the time, it's one that's grown on me immensely in the time since, spearheaded by great tracks like stabilise , midnight sun , and her masterpiece the dealer . As a result, I was excited going into this record and it seemed like with each single Nilufer zeroed in closer and closer to a spectacularly dynamic sonic contrast. It's one that pays off on the resulting album even if My Method Actor  gets off to a bit of a slow start.  The album definitely needs to be tackled in two parts, but it's not because the first half is a complete wash or anything. Opener Keep On Dancing  is more of a thesis statement than anything else. It's a start to the record that assures everyone that no matter what happens, Nulifer will keep dancing th...

Had 30 songs on the shortlist this week, wish me luck.  5.  Driver - Soccer Mommy While Soccer Mommy has never really consistently dazzled me the way some of her singer-songwriter peers do, she is pretty good at delivering something consistently solid. That's the case with her second single of the year which features a punchy instrumental marked by brash cymbal clashes and a great guitar solo on the bridge. But even more than that, it's her killer vocals on the hook that really sell the song.  Listen 4.  Ballet  - The Garden After loving the most recent Garden album WAY more than anything the eccentric pair had done before I'm glad to see them keeping their momentum up on this new single. They once again combine punk snarl, synthetic drums and dizzying production to serve up a short but incredibly memorable song that's just as punchy as it is catchy at every moment.  Listen 3.  Dancing In The Flames  - The Weeknd While this may not have been the m...

These debut albums came from artists that people have had their eyes on for quite a while. With their first big swings some hit a home run and others completely struck out. This Could Be Texas  - English Teacher I remember hearing about a British indie rock band called English Teacher sometime around when their 2022 EP dropped. Somehow that attention got lost in the mix and when they dropped their debut album earlier this year it blindsided me. Without it worked into my plans a full review of the album fell by the wayside, that was at least until it surprisingly won this year's Mercury Prize. I had to grind everything to a halt and cover this record. But that framing isn't entirely true. I have developed a pretty strong familiarity with one of the record's singles R&B . Though I didn't encounter the thoughtful and ferocious indie punk jam until after the album was released, I like it so much I'm surprised it didn't inspire me to review This Could Be Texas  o...

Review by Lav: Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds is a legendary music outfit by almost any standard. Nick has been hard at work for over 4 decades now and as he's continued to evolve and wander through landscapes of new sounds he's continued to be a fascinating artist. Even decades into his career his sound has continued to evolve, channeling tragedy into chilling expanse on albums like Skeleton Tree  and weaving playful evocative poetry on 2021's Carnage , his previous record before Wild God . Despite the length of his career thus far, he continues to serve up records whose sonic and narrative progressions are fascinating to unwind.  The era of this new album got off to a really strong start with a pair of singles I liked quite a bit. Wild God  came first and delivered a vibrant series of descriptors telling the story of the titular "wild god." In my favorite point on the song it assesses the kinds of expectations that people have for a god merely because it's a ...

Review by Lav: Nala Sinephro is an artist I really should have known about sooner. Back in 2021 I was blindsided by the release of a new ambient jazz album from a new artist debuting on Warp records. Given my admiration for both the genre and the label I was thrilled to dive into it and the record lived up to my expectations. So this time around as Nala geared up to release her second album three years later, I was prepared. Once again, she's delivered an excellent outing.  The record starts off in familiar fashion with long ambient jazz compositions that are in line with what I was anticipating. The 7-minute opener Continuum 1  is simple in terms of instrumentation worked into the arrangement and yet it still makes it to some interesting places. While Nala's synths and the steady backing drums are omnipresent, it's most playful element if wandering saxophone. The sax dominates the attention of the track while it's around at both its liveliest moments early on and its s...

This week featured some familiar faces that have popped up on the best new tracks segment all year, see if they made it again. <3 5.  Ruby Rosery  - A$AP Rocky (feat. J. Cole) So we're officially back in an era where Rocky is releasing music regularly and it's brought us to the reserved, J. Cole-featuring Ruby Rosery . Like Cole's appearance on Metro Boomin & Future's album earlier this year it's a more reserved moment than anticipated and yet his intimacy works well in this format. Both Rocky and Cole are casual but confident and as slick as ever on this memorable crossover.  Listen 4.  I Walk  - Mount Eerie It's been a noticeable few years off for Mount Eerie since Phil Elverum returned to The Microphones with a unique and conceptual project in 2020 that sought to tell the story of how the project evolved with one single album-length track. Now he's back as Mount Eerie with a sonic palette that still exists within the intimate folds his music always...

Review by Lav: Duster is a California slowcore band whose original run of material in the late 90s and early 2000s went under-appreciated in its time. The band's catalog, in particular their 1998 masterpiece debut as Duster Stratosphere  has developed quite a reputation online for its nostalgic haze and swaying subtlety. In the wake of their surprising online success, the band reunited releasing a self-titled album in 2019 that I liked but wasn't head over heels for. Where the band really hit me was on their darker surprise-released 2022 album Together . Much like that record, In Dreams  arrives as a surprise drop, but by comparison, its attempts to channel what makes Duster unique as a band are more hit or miss.  That isn't to say it never works though. Opener Quiet Eyes  begins about how you'd think wading directly into somber slowcore with reverb-soaked nostalgic guitars and punchy timely drums. It pulls a punch that many songs on the record do of having a very lo...

It's that time of year when I apologize to some of the more outside-the-box music genres for focusing a little too much on pop, rap, indie, rock, and R&B. Let's give both hardcore and screamo, and some records that exist within the folds of both, a chance.  Persona EP - Gel Last year Gel rode in a huge wave of hype to deliver one of my favorite debut album of 2023. When they the pummeling single Mirage  earlier this year it made it seem like they would continue climbing that mountain whenever their next project arrived. That next project is Persona , a 5-track and 13-minute EP that's only a few minutes shorter than the album that preceded it. The new project serves up songs like Martyr , a similarly short but surprisingly versatile and unrelentingly fiery two minutes that would have fit in well on Only Constant . But it's the very shoes the EP has to fill that handicap it from hitting as hard as it should.  Take a track like Shame  whose vocal layering should mak...