Lav's Music Corner

 Review by Lavender: Darkside is the project of prolific singer and producer Nicolas Jaar alongside multi-instrumentalist Dave Harrington. The project's inception actually dates back to the earliest days of Jaar's acclaimed career and the pair's debut album together was released in 2013. Following a long dormant period, the band returned in 2021 with a second album called Spiral , which I thought was every bit as good as their debut if not better. That's why I was excited to see the wait for a third release taking just half the time and went into Nothing  expecting the pair to keep all their momentum up.  Darkside has always been a strange and difficult to define project. They're probably best described as art rock but with a production and sometimes even compositional slant inspired by Jaar's more electronica-oriented projects. But even with that premise, Nothing is by FAR the pair's weirdest and most difficult to define album yet. The project jumps all ov...

Musically the album is king. While singles top charts and generate radio play it's the album that fans stay up all night waiting for and constantly ask for online. Everything about these collections of songs seems just as innocuous as well, a collection of songs. But what they mean to us and what they meant to us specifically in 2020 is immeasurable. I listened to just over 250 albums this year and reviewed almost 200 of them and as usual there were tons of records I just didn't have time to get to. As much as I wish I could have listened to absolutely everything, this list is the best of everything I actually could listen to this year. These records range from solid and slightly inconsistent experiments to some of the best and most groundbreaking music of the year, and is neatly arranged into a 100-1 list as best as I could do, enjoy. 100. Freezepop - Fantasizer One of the premiere synth pop bands of the 2000's returned in 2020 with Fantasizer . While it came completely ou...