Lav's Music Corner

Chris Stapleton has become a critically acclaimed mainstay of modern country music. Just as his 2015 debut album Traveller  was being anointed as one of the definitive country masterpieces of the 2010s, he was reinventing himself entirely. In 2020, Stapleton started over on the album Starting Over  which took an even more defined narrative and often quite uncommercial focus. Regardless the album was a smash hit with basically everyone that heard it. With his status firmly cemented, Higher  had every opportunity to be a victory lap.  Review by Lav:  I still considered myself a Chris Stapleton skeptic in 2020. I liked his music but I didn't LOVE it. Starting Over changed that. The album featured the dynamic musings of a truly compelling songwriter presented with the raw grime and intensity of great country and folk music. So to say I was excited for a follow-up would be an understatement, especially after I liked all of the singles a lot. While the album is plenty...

Another big week of new releases, let's get it. <3 5.  Let Them Live  - Death's Dynamic Shroud DDS release about 9 albums and 200 songs a year and generally, I'm pretty iffy on them but this single really works for me. I love the versatility of vocal samples throughout. I also love the very vibrant and futuristic beat which builds and builds and eventually gets these wiry guitars right at the end it's a very focused and well-executed rendition of their sound.  Listen 4.  N/Y  - The Haxan Cloak It has been 10 god damn years since this masterful dark ambient project last released new material. What he returned with is sonically very different, but honestly I'd be more surprised after all this time if it sounded the same. With stuttering drums and distant booming electronica this feels closer to something Prurient was doing around the last time we got new Haxan Cloak music. It trades out nuance in between the cracks for pummeling intensity and comes out the othe...

5.  Ruins - Lost Girls Jenny Hval's Lost Girls project is back with a seeming shift in focus both sonically and compositionally. The track is more conventional in almost every sense than much of their last album but it works because Jenny is incapable of not standing out. The last minute is really where she seals the deal with her trademark girlish vocals buttoning up the song perfectly. Listen 4.  Talk To Me Nice  - Tinashe I've been awaiting new Tinashe ever since I was shocked that her last project ended up as one of my favorite R&B projects of 2021. While this new single doesn't set the world on fire the way some of her best songs do, its more lowkey tone still works. She manages to use her poise to extract obedience out of the track's title refrain and the song is growing on me pretty much every time I hear it.  Listen 3.  White Horse  - Chris Stapleton Alongside the announcement of his long-awaited follow-up to 2020's Starting Over , an album I st...