Lav's Music Corner

Probably my last rapid fire for a while with a lot of great new music coming out, maybe. Love In Exile  - Arooj Aftab, Vijay Iyer, Shahzad Ismaily Even though I was late to formally cover the album, I really enjoyed Arooj Aftab's 2021 breakout Vulture Prince  and I was really looking forward to how she was going to follow it up. What I didn't expect, though I maybe should have, is this trio of veteran musicians linking up for a deeply compelling explorative jazz record. The group take a pretty sparse approach to filling in the cracks with their sound, serving up just vocals, keys, and bass with almost no studio interference to their original live recordings. The record is also thematically sparse with compositions built around short lines of poetry often repeated throughout and expanded upon through the developing instrumentation. Take the opening track To Remain/To Return  whose vocal diatribes often take a backseat to long wanderings on the piano only to return at surpr...