Lav's Music Corner

These are just three functionally unaffiliated bands who all are technically under the exceedingly large umbrella of "rock" that I wanted to cover.  In Times New Roman...  - Queens Of The Stone Age With a full decade between the release of Queens Of The Stone Age's excellent album Like Clockwork  and now, I'm comfortable saying that I don't like this band as much as everyone else does. I appreciate the one-two punch of Rated R  and Songs For The Deaf , and Like Clockwork  sees the band sounding better than they had any right to in their career. But now 8 albums into their career I still consider myself a picky fan and I wasn't crazy about the singles from this album. One thing I can say in favor of this record is that it sees the band taking risks they weren't willing to on their previous album. By that metric alone this project is an improvement on the safe sounds of Villains  or Era Vulgaris . But despite that experimentation, much of the corny blues roc...

One month into the year and we've had three VERY solid release weekends as far as new singles go. This one didn't exactly shine as bright but there are still tracks worth hearing.  5.  Layla  - Unknown Mortal Orchestra For the second single in a row I'm not blown away immediately by a new UMO track and for almost the exact same reasons. There's some very solid songwriting here and sounds that I would imagine could craft immaculately textured vibes if they came from a different era in the band's career. But like Captain Cook  before it the instrumentation here is pretty raw and scant. I could see the refrains here winning me over with time but I'm not sure the song has anything like the intimately plucked strings that eventually changed my mind on their last single. Listen 4.  Forbidden Doors  - Tennis Tennis isn't really a band I'm ever expecting to show up and drop one of the best singles of the week. While I've enjoyed a LOT of their material in th...