Lav's Music Corner

Review by Lavender: Backxwash is a rapper who garnered tons of attention and acclaim for a trilogy of albums she released between 2020 and 2022. The projects combined a thunderous style of hip-hop crossed with an embrace for classical metal stylings and screamed vocals. In combination with her vulnerability and willingness to discuss harrowing subject matter, the resulting music was extremely intense and extremely unique. The trilogy ended with my favorite release of the bunch HIS HAPPINESS SHALL COME FIRST EVEN THOUGH WE ARE SUFFERING  which is among my favorite rap albums of this entire decade so far. So needless to say I was pretty excited for her return.  The two singles this album led with had my expectations as high as ever. "Wake Up" is a thunderous epic of a song that really blew me away last year and I still absolutely love it. It's a multi-faceted composition that slips in and out of its different passages flawlessly and the way it always circles back around to ...

Review by Lavender: Japanese Breakfast is the project of singer-songwriter Michelle Zauner, who has spent nearly a decade now writing some of the most interesting, playful, and versatile music in the world of indie pop and rock. Her appeal spanned new peaks in 2021 with her third album Jubilee , where songs like "Be Sweet" and "Paprika" showed off a more vibrant and poppy side to her sound and found critical acclaim doing so. My favorite Japanese Breakfast album remains her 2017 outing Soft Sounds From Another Planet , which used playful atmosphere and entrancing space to highlight her abilities as a writer. After hearing some of that quiet poise in the singles for this record, I was hoping for a triumphant return to that style. But it is not what I got.  Let's talk highlights first, because the album does have some. Lead single "Orlando In Love" is a track I hoped I would like more within the context of the album. It's a gentle track that could se...