Lav's Music Corner

This weekend I'm away at Shaky Knees music festival so there's won't be many new reviews and the best new tracks might be late. To supplement I'm covering a trio of bands that will be playing at the festival this weekend. (Editor's note, when this was started Manchester Orchestra was scheduled to play at the event but had to back out before the show) The Valley Of Visions  - Manchester Orchestra 2000's indie band Manchester Orchestra recaptured the attention of indie fans, me included, with their 2017 album A Black Mile To The Surface  which felt like a fittingly dramatic and emotional blend of the styles of indie music both old and new. While I wasn't nearly as into their follow-up The Million Masks Of God  I do plan on seeing the band this weekend and part of that was giving this new shorter album a few relistens. The record's two singles didn't necessarily impress me but they also didn't give me any reason to look away. The first of which Capi...

With a quarter of the year behind us we're all starting to get a little bit of a picture of what music and the music industry is going to look like in 2019. There have been plenty of flawed records but a handful of them have shown off something really special, so on this list I will run through the ten best albums I've heard so far this year and dive into why they shouldn't be missed. 10. FIDLAR - Almost Free Almost Free  isn't a perfect record by any means and it has some experiments that seem a little strange as well as some moments that don't stand out. But at its best the album is one of the most rattling and fun challenges to rock music that's come out all year. Songs like By Myself , Can't You See and Scam Likely  sound so different from each other but find common ground on excellent songwriting, exciting performances and a refreshing energy not found in so much tame and lifeless modern rock music.  Review 9. Foals - Everythin...

FIDLAR is a California garage punk band who exploded onto the indie music scene in 2013 with a fantastic self-titled debut that blended punk musics hilarious cynicism with garage's blistering and low-fi rock aesthetic. They dropped numerous well received singles and developed a devoted fanbase before dropping Too  their second project in 2015. The album had some popular and well received singles but ultimately fell short of fans expectations for a follow-up. And now after the long wait for a third release and 3 singles released throughout 2018 FIDLAR gear up for another album. After some moderately good singles last year the band started 2019 off with the fantastic By Myself single, which did a lot to drum up hype for the project and was praised critically across the board. Review By Lav: I, like most people really enjoyed the debut FIDLAR  album when it came out back in 2013, the music reminded me of many of my favorite low-fi genres of the 80s and 90s and the snarky at...