Lav's Music Corner

Review by Lavender: Panda Bear is the nickname/project of psychedelic folk artist Noah Lennox. Lennox has spent more than two decades as a member of critical darling indie folk outfit Animal Collective, but has also been a magnet for acclaim as a solo artist. The peak of that came on his 2007 album Person Pitch , which I and many others consider to be a masterpiece. His last solo album dropped back in 2019 but he's stayed very busy since then with multiple Animal Collective records dropping and a collaborative album with Sonic Boom in 2022. Now he's returning to solo work with Sinister Grift , a surprisingly vulnerable record that sees Noah dealing with the aftermath of his divorce. And it's absolutely stunning.  Sinister Grift led off with the single "Defense" which was pretty notable for being a collaboration with the biggest critical darling of 2024, Cindy Lee. I did enjoy the track, but I didn't realize just how much I liked its catchy lucid psychedelia un...

Review by Lavender: Ichiko Aoba is a Japanese folk singer whose music dates all the way back to 2010. Her back catalog received a ton of retroactive acclaim in the wake of her critical breakthrough, her masterful 2020 album Windswept Adan . That record introduced many, myself included, to her gentle voice, beautiful arrangements, and naturalistic songwriting. All of that is VERY present on its follow-up 5 years later. Though Luminescent Creatures  won't be as awe-inspiringly fresh as its predecessor for most listeners, it achieves a similarly remarkable beauty.  That beauty was predicted by the singles, all three of which I loved. "Luciferine" came first last year and wow was it astonishing to hear it again in its full beauty after a few months when playing the album. The production in the song's densest moments is just perfect, giving every piece of lush instrumentation its own place to breathe and fly. It also features what I think may be the catchiest set of refrai...

Review by Lavender: The Weather Station is the project of singer-songwriter Tamara Lindeman and she's been releasing albums since the late 2000s. She had her breakthrough of sorts in 2021 when she signed to Fat Possum and released Ignorance,  an album that achieved both more popularity and more acclaim than anything she had done before. I thought that record was fine, just okay, and I didn't really understand all the hype. Which is why I was even more surprised to find her quieter and far less acclaimed follow-up a year later completely irresistible. With subtle performances and infectious songwriting her 6th album How Is It That I Should Look At The Stars  was by FAR my favorite so far and in conjunction with a few good singles leading into Humanhood , I was excited to see her build on her sound.  Humanhood led off with the single "Neon Signs" which I absolutely loved at the time and still do. It has the uptempo pep of tracks on Ignorance  but the songwriting and pe...

Review by Lav: Torres is the singer-songwriter project of Mackenzie Scott, who I've been listening to for a long time. Across her 5 studio albums so far she managed to make herself distinctive with both a variety of unique sonic eras and an entrancing lyricism. The last time we heard from Torres on Thirstier  in 2021 she delivered her hardest rocking album yet which righteously dove into unflinching love songs one after another. But as the singles projected, What an enormous room  is a transition back to a much colder and more specious sound she played with earlier in her career.  What an enormous room  had three singles and I like all of them, though they each had to grow on me with repeat listens. The best of them is the lead single Collect , a song I've completely fallen in love with that now feels like a thesis for how chilling the album itself would turn out. The methodical repetition on the hook just reinforced how confrontational it is and the way the song dev...

Way back when I first started reviewing albums in full on this blog one of the first records I covered was Ryan Adams' heartland rocking Prisoner . Since then, I've been basically silent on him as an artist in almost any capacity as he's grown to be a pretty controversial figure for reasons I totally agree with but won't dig through here. In his retreat from the indie mainstream he's taken to releasing an absolute shit ton of music, far more than I could keep up with on the blog. But when he dropped four entire new albums on the first day of the year my curiosity just got the best of me and for some reason I chose to review all of them. Heatwave  - Ryan Adams This album is absolutely ALL over the place right out of the gate. It kicks off with a short roaring classic punk rager before shifting into an 80s power ballad type cut and then hitting the title track which feels like a Spoon-inspired piece of indie rock. The only thing that ties all the songs together is the...

I've had a busy few weeks but this was yet another massive release weekend on top of the hundreds of albums I already feel like I have to play catch-up on. So hopefully there will be a LOT of rapid fire reviews coming soon. SPARK  - Whitney I've been a fan of pretty much everything Whitney has done since they first started out. Their very raw debut album turned up the folk influences and ciphered it through their own eccentricities, giving the impression of a true local band gone international overnight. Their sophomore album was another treat even as it shifted their sound into a much more familiar and polished brand of indie folk. In fact, the first inclination I had that I might ever actually not like a Whitney record was when I heard the lead single from this album, which seemed to predict a sea change I wasn't really vibing with. But after a parade of singles that reinforced to me why Whitney are who they are I was excited for the record all over again. That excitement...

Grouper is the musical project of singer and songwriter Liz Harris who has received loads of critical acclaim across her long career in a myriad of genres. From indie folk to ambient to a nearly undefinable blend of psychedelic folk micro genres. Shade  follows Liz's previous album Grid Of Points  in 2018 which was a short but conceptual experiment with minimalism. Shade  takes that indulgence to a whole new level with some of the most sonically reserved folk tunes of 2021. Review By Lav: Everyone has their favorite Grouper project and for most people it's 2008's  Dragging A Dead Deer Up A Hill . While I love that record I also have to say that in 2011 she followed it up with A I A Alien Observer , an ambient record unlike anything else I've ever heard in the genre. So when I heard some of the early press I got pretty excited about the promise she made to continue fusing extreme minimalism and ambient music traits into her songs and she absolutely did not disapp...

Fleet Foxes are a Seattle indie folk band fronted primarily by singer and songwriter Robin Pecknold. They became indie darlings of the Pitchfork folk era in 2008 with a critically acclaimed debut EP followed by an even more acclaimed debut album. Since then they have released the poetic Helplessness Blues  in 2011 and the winding experimental Crack-Up  in 2017 both of which received nearly unanimous critical acclaim. Shore  was announced just a few days before it's release which coincided with the autumnal equinox. Review By Lavender: I like Fleet Foxes, both Fleet Foxes , Helplessness Blues  and even the Sun Giant  EP have songs I love even if I don't worship the band at nearly the same level as many others. The first time the band really wowed me was the first time I ever got to properly review their music on their 3rd record Crack-Up , my favorite of the bands album by far. Compared to the bright indie riffs and simple song structures of their early work Crac...

Bibio is the long running English folk project of producer and multi-instrumentalist Stephen James Wilkinson. He has released a number of records over the past fifteen years to various levels of critical success highlighted by his break-out Ambivalence Avenue  in 2009 and his experiment with ambient music Phantom Brickworks  in 2017. Review By Lavender: Bibio has long been one of those artists that I stop to listen to pretty much every time he drops anything even though no single project of his has ever blown me away. The closest he came was with his ambient project Phantom Brickworks  and I had hoped that in the wake of that release his folk oriented music would please me more than ever before. While his last record Ribbons  was decent I think that the short but sweet Sleep On The Wing  is a better interpolation of ambiance into his sound. The record was kicked off with two singles that fit in line with much of Bibio's past works. The title track and opener Sle...

Whitney is a Chicago indie band who wowed in 2016 with their debut record Light Upon The Lake  which featured a unique low-fi indie sound that mixed in elements of folk music to create a brand of indie rock truly their own. Review By Lavender: I really enjoyed Whitney's debut album a few years ago and had the chance to catch them live to experience their unique approach to indie music which was a fantastic experience. I have been anticipating another record from the band for quite a while now and after a few solid singles I had high expectations for the album and now that is is here I'm mostly happy with it. Forever Turned Around  is a true sequel to Light Upon The Lake  in that it is about as consistent and features an incredibly similar sound. It also falls for for one of the same flaws as the first record with repeating a lot of sounds and making the record a cohesive but repetitive sound. That's why some of these songs serve better as singles and had me very ...

Of Monsters And Men is an Icelandic indie band that skyrocketed to stardom around the world in 2011 when their mega-hit Little Talks  took off and their debut album My Head Is An Animal  went platinum later that same year. Despite being met with critical acclaim the band took four years to release a follow-up and by that time much of their initial hype had died down. Making this even more of a challenge to the band was that their second record Beneath The Skin  was met with lukewarm critical reception. Now once again the band has taken four years between studio albums and have the opportunity to recover their reputation as an indie act of veteran status with two singles that were met positively leading up to this record. Review By Lavender: My Head Is An Animal  sounded so exciting in 2011, there were huge walls of instrumentation that enveloped so much of the tame alternative rock and folk inspired indie that dropped around the time. Not only did Of Monsters ...

The Mountain Goats are a long running indie project based in North Carolina that is focused around singer-songwriter John Darnielle. They have over 25 years of history diving into numerous concepts and transitioning through different sounds and styles. In League With Dragons  features a wide variety of personnel and was labelled by Darnielle as a "rock Opera" with influences from various literary sources.  Review By Lavender: Despite the fact that I believe Darnielle is quite talented and that the band reps my home state of North Carolina I haven't been the biggest Mountain Goats fan. Most of their material in the 2010's struck me as creative, but not essential. There is almost always a baseline element of songwriting and there is almost never a drowning in influences or contemporary sounds and that is as true as ever here, but once again the band fails to make a significant mark on me. The lead single for this album didn't thrill me straight away, ...

Kristian Matsson AKA The Tallest Man On Earth is a Swedish folk singer who came to prominence in 2008 when his debut album Shallow Grave  took off in the indie scene given his tight similarities to Bob Dylan. But unlike a Greta Van Fleet approach Kristian did a great job replicating what Dylan did well and evolving it into the 21st century better than Dylan did himself. With a series of albums containing captivating performances and low-fi folk instrumentation he has been one of the most acclaimed artists in the true folk scene since he first arrived.  Review By Lavender: If there is one thing Tallest Man On Earth has achieved for the past decade plus it's consistency. Album after album he drops some excellent folk music with a pretty fantastic base of tunes that are always at least enjoyable while their on. Not every album is as good as 2010's The Wild Hunt  and not all the singles are as good as 1904  but he consistently delivers on solid full leng...

Better Oblivion Community Center is the duo consisting of legendary neo-folk artist and former Bright Eyes frontman Conor Oberst and up and coming folk rock star and Boygenius member Phoebe Bridgers. The duo did very little press for the album before its release besides dropping a nondescript interlude style single but given their various success and the combination of a genre veteran with a great new talent gave reason to be excited for this project.  Review By Lav: Better Oblivion Community Center  is a conceptual breathe of fresh air for me. Even in the world of next day album drops and wiped out social media pages its so hard to be truly surprised by a release in the way this project made so many inside fans feel. The duo of Conor Oberst who fronted one of my favorite bands of the 2000's the incredibly indie folk icons Bright Eyes, and Phoebe Bridgers who released a solid debut album in 2017 and followed it up with the quality boygenius  EP the pair seems prim...

Sharon Van Etten is an American singer-songwriter that rose to prominence in 2012 with the release of her third studio album Tramp  which featured production work from The National's Aaron Dessner and was recorded in his home studio in Brooklyn. The follow up to that album was 2014's Are We There  a fantastically unique display of talent that earned her critical praise and a larger audience than ever before. Taking 4 years to follow-up this project left big expectations for her follow-up. This was only made more fervent by multiple singles which incorporated some unique and interesting sounds different from each other, and from what the singer-songwriter genre typically has to offer. Review by Lav: After I enjoyed Sharon Van Etten's last album 2014's Are We There  and the roster of singles leading up to this long overdue follow-up impressed me I was excited for this project but not at all sure what to expect from such a unique and genre bending singer songwriter. ...