Lav's Music Corner

A massively hype week with some huge new releases this late in the year is a surprise, but I'll take it! 5.  The Laugh Is In The Eyes  - Julia Holter Julia is back following a remarkable new album earlier this year and in this new single she finds herself playing with similarly indulgent palettes of space. The song has a dreamy sauntering demeanor with an imprecise poise but all of the instrumental sounds that do seep through are wonderful and wrapped around the core of Julia's beautiful vocals.  Listen 4.  Luciferine  - Ichiko Aoba The charm and whimsy of folk music has officially returned with a new Ichiko Aoba album on the way next year. She's teeing the record off with this fittingly beautiful lead single which deploys gentle strings and ornate backing vocals. It all swells to life around Ichiko's girlish vocals and swaying poetry, to great results. She may not be rewriting the book, but it works for a good reason.  Listen 3.  Crispy Skin  - S...

Review by Lav: Julia Holter has been one of my favorite artists of the past 15 years by absolutely any metric. Since her very beginning, she's been dazzling with absolute whimsy weaved into almost everything she's done. In 2013 she reached a peak of accessibility with her immaculate textures weaved into irresistible wintry indie songs. But since then she's been indulging further and further into experimental flavors of instrumentation and composition. After releasing a magnum ops of experimental beauty on 2018's Aviary  I was thrilled for whatever she was going to drop next. While that album is hardly an indulgence in excess, by comparison,  Something  is a shift towards minimal space that comes with a no less beautiful eye for detail.  The singles from this album absolutely blew me away. Sun Girl  came first and it also serves as the album's opener. I absolutely adore the song with its wandering pan flutes and field recordings. It comes together with this vibra...

Late drop again because I'm just getting back from vacation but hey at least it's coming out today.  5.  Von Dutch  - Charli XCX Aspiring hyperpop DJs got the best news of the year when Charli XCX announced that her upcoming project would be a club record. We got the first taste of that with von dutch  and, yep, it's certainly a club record. Okay there are plenty of things I like about the song like the revving squeaky synths and Charli's always unflinching confidence. But the beat and refrains just start to feel like nothing aa the song goes on. It doesn't have the actual high impact that I was hoping for from a lead single, If the refrains start to click with me more going forward the song will work a LOT better.  Listen 4.  Running Through The Campus  - Cloud Nothings I've always had a soft spot for this band even as they seem to get less and less hype each year. This song continues their shift into a pop flavor though it arguably dials some of that...

Okay so I'm getting a late start to the year at least on the blog. I woke up one day this week and realized I had somehow just kind of forgotten the weekly segment I've done on here for years. So there's been three weeks of the new year so far and quite a few high-profile songs released, these are the 10 best. 10.  Right Back To It  - Waxahatchee (feat. MJ Lenderman) Fresh off a breakthrough year for Wednesday, MJ Lenderman teams up for a supporting contribution to Waxahatchee's new song, and boy does it go over well. The pair aren't exactly charting new ground stylistically but Katie's vocals are somehow even more infectious than ever before and the woozy folk instrumental palette is still a near perfect fit.  Listen 9.  J Christ  - Lil Nas X Much like Doja Cat did last year with Paint The Town Red , Lil Nas X is leaning into his most controversial instincts. I think he ended up with a pretty catchy song which keeps up the line of his short and incredibly infec...

This was just one of those week. Sometimes good releases pile on top of each other and there are at LEAST 10 songs I could have included. But for my own sanity here are the five best new songs I heard this week. 5.  Luna  - Stillblue Another inexplicably blissful new single from Stillblue. While it will certainly remind you of the band's other new singles from this year, they're starting to prove exactly why this is their sound. This track features an expansive second half that might be among the grandest things the group has done yet and it pays off all the poignant patience deployed up to that point perfectly.  Listen 4.  My Room   - Ty Segall Ty Segall showing up and dropping a song that sounds more like Radiohead in the 90s than Radiohead themselves did in the 90s was not on my 2023 bingo card. But honestly, I'll take it I love the sour wining guitar leads and as much as Ty can conjure with his voice at its loudest he manages to makes quite a bit of a r...

This was a busy week full of big announcements, highly anticipated singles and the start of some promising new eras. For the second week in a row I had quite a tricky time putting this list together. 5.  Down  - Hot Chip After one of the more unconventional eras of their career a few years ago Hot Chip seemed to announce a return to the basics with this bright, catchy and incredibly dancy lead single. With punchy percussion and irresistible synths all built around an earworm sample it's very easy to explain and experience the great things about the track.  Listen 4.  Hips  - Warpaint This new era of Warpaint tracks has been defined by a gentle but sleek sound and this song is no different with playful basslines and ethereal vocal melodies. The percussion continues to be a huge highlight and the circular jam it goes on throughout the final 30 seconds is like icing on the cake. This is quickly becoming one of my most anticipated projects of the year.   L...

Chelsea Wolfe is an American singer-songwriter who has been releasing music for almost a decade that interpolates folk, electronica, rock and even some metal into her sound over the years. She released one of her most acclaimed records to date in 2017 with Hiss Spun  and has been building up to Birth Of Violence  with more acoustic and atmospheric singles. Review By Lavender: Chelsea Wolfe has never really crossed my radar until I decided to check out her 2017 record Hiss Spun  as it received rave reviews from critics and fans alike. The record was a strange odyssey of genre crossovers and indulgent songwritng that I enjoyed and even one that grew on me after I first heard it. I figured Birth Of Violence  would be a good moment to dive into her history and listen to some of her older records I had missed and I have to say that I wasn't really overwhelmingly impressed. While Apokalypsis and Pain Is Beauty  were interesting listens that I enjoyed ...

Jenny Hval  is a Norwegian singer-songwriter who dropped her breakout record  Innocence Is Kinky  in 2013 to critical acclaim, citing her bold spoken word style and unrelenting female sexuality as refreshing qualities. Since then she has continued to receive critical acclaim for records like  Apocalypse, Girl  and Blood Bitch as well as a very well received EP last year. As her style continues to evolve musically and thematically from record to record it is difficult to predict what Jenny will do next, but expectations are high for her first studio album in three years. Review By Lavender: I am a huge fan of Jenny Hval and have been for about as long as she has been around. While I missed Viscera  in 2011 I was around for Innocence Is Kinky  and I liked it a whole lot, and still do to this day. 2015's Apocalypse, Girl  was one of her most popular and critically acclaimed records and while I enjoyed it quite a bit and was happy for her ...

Weyes Blood is the pseudonym of Natalie Mering who has been releasing baroque and chamber pop music under the name for almost a year now. After receiving more acclaim and popularity with each release Titanic Rising  has a number of very well received singles leading up to its release and looks to be the most successful Weyes Blood project to date. Review By Lav: I can't say I've ever been a big fan of Weyes Blood up to this point, 2016's Front Row Seat To Earth was a step in the right direction but still an album that I found hard to remember even as I had just heard it. But given her switch to Sub Pop for the release of this album and a trilogy singles well received by her fans and critics alike there is all the more reason to believe that this will be the most complete and essential Weyes Blood project yet. Let's start with the singles, as they represent large categories of what appears across most of this album. Andromeda  is a huge spacey instrumental that...