Lav's Music Corner

We're reaching that point at the end of the year where I'm grasping at any possible straw to put together projects I wanna cover before 2024 is out. This time we're taking the most meaningless of genre defiers, rock, and basing it around that to review 5 very different-sounding albums that I meant to cover earlier in the year, enjoy. <3 Heavy Glory  - Elias Ronnenfelt Iceage was one of the most innovative and electric post-punk bands of the 2010s and while their 2020 record Seek Shelter  struck a chord with me, it didn't quite seem to make the same amount of noise as some of its predecessors. Regardless, their lead singer Elias Ronnenfelt has a pretty distinct voice and vocal style, which had me pretty interested in the direction he would take his debut solo album. That was confounded by a crop of singles I'm pretty fond of, highlighted by the most Iceage-sounding of the bunch, "Worm Grew A Spine." I've also grown more fond of the folksier Dylan-esq...

5.  First Rodeo  - Kelsea Ballerini Kelsey Ballerini's vulnerabilities continue to be the highlight of her music. While the track does have a gentle swaying instrumental and a pretty memorable chorus it's really the bearing of her soul that she displays through second-guessing and pure admiration that fully sells the song.  Listen 4.  the cost of giving up  - Poppy While Poppy has become pretty damn hit-or-miss since a great 2020 effort, you can't say she doesn't occasionally hit the mark. It's the songs where she manages to slice directly between her girlish dreamy pop side and her crushing dark metal instincts that hit the hardest. the cost of giving up  throws it back a few years in her discography to when she had that sound even more honed in and it's all the better for it.  Listen 3.  Defense  - Panda Bear (feat. Cindy Lee) I'll be the first to admit that this song may not have lived up to the impossible level of excitement generated pur...

5.  New Species  - Iglooghost Earlier this year Iglooghost released a song that I didn't exactly see the appeal of. In a sense, I can kind of identify a similar issue with this frenetic banger if I think about it for too long. But I consider thinking about this for too long to be a cardinal sin. The song is a high-tempo pummeling of wiry electronic that was always happy to hear in the moment. Listen 4.  Like I Say (I runaway)  - Nilufer Yanya It must just be a heavy week. Nilufer's album indulges with sound in a way many singer-songwriters don't want to and she managed to do it without getting the way of her poetry. Now the sounds are even louder and even at moments when it feels emotionally overpowering, it's magnetically aligned. She continues to sound not only unique, but vibrant.  Listen 3.  Mirage  - Gel Last year Gel used subtle interpolations of different genres and styles to add meaningful flavor to their brand of hardcore. The debut album that...

5.  Gem & I  - Animal Collective This may be the simplest of AnCo's new singles yet. That isn't just due to its composition which certainly arrives more slimmed down than the 21 minute epic they led off their new era with. But even thematically and sonically what you see is what you get with the song. Thankfully, I find the refrains very compelling and the gentle indie folk flourishes are pretty satisfying even on repeat listens.  Listen 4.  Motorbike  - Poppy Right out of the gate, I'll say I know that this song does have a kind of critical flaw, the lyrics. To call this clunky would be an insult to a lot of embarrassing songwriting I've described in those terms in the past. It's unfortunate because this song has a chorus that I find absolutely intoxicating and it's been stuck in my head since the moment I heard it. I also think the track has thematic elements that work really well. The sleek and sensual worship of motorcycle girls is pretty easy to get beh...

5.  Ruins - Lost Girls Jenny Hval's Lost Girls project is back with a seeming shift in focus both sonically and compositionally. The track is more conventional in almost every sense than much of their last album but it works because Jenny is incapable of not standing out. The last minute is really where she seals the deal with her trademark girlish vocals buttoning up the song perfectly. Listen 4.  Talk To Me Nice  - Tinashe I've been awaiting new Tinashe ever since I was shocked that her last project ended up as one of my favorite R&B projects of 2021. While this new single doesn't set the world on fire the way some of her best songs do, its more lowkey tone still works. She manages to use her poise to extract obedience out of the track's title refrain and the song is growing on me pretty much every time I hear it.  Listen 3.  White Horse  - Chris Stapleton Alongside the announcement of his long-awaited follow-up to 2020's Starting Over , an album I st...

I'm a day late, sorry I was at Shaky Knees. Enjoy <3 5.  Four Kinds Of Horses  - Peter Gabriel In the ongoing march of new Peter Gabriel singles each coming with multiple versions this specific track may not stand out the most. Once again it's a little longwinded and Gabriel seems to assume a level of grandiosity for the track that it doesn't really do anything to earn. However, seeing it through proved to be a pretty enjoyable endeavor.  Listen 4.  Spit  - Poppy Especially in a light week this Poppy cover of the underrated Kittie song was going to stand out. As usual she isn't lacking for energy and the pummeling instrumentation is the perfect backdrop for her screams. Even if it comes off a bit formulaic it's a formula that works. Listen 3.  You Are The Beginning  - Boris/Uniform Prolific Japanese rock band Boris is teaming up with industrial act Uniform for a new collab album as you'd know if you've been anywhere near someone listening to this ne...

Paraglow  - Parannoul & Asian Glow This is the new collaborative project from two artists whose EP wells I've already dipped into in 2022. Parannoul's breakout album To See The Next Part Of The Dream  was one of my favorite releases of 2021 and I was craving new music so badly I reviewed both the Parannoul ambient side project Mydreamfever's album Rough And Beautiful Place  and the B-Sides EP that followed it with leftover tracks from Dream . Asian Glow on the other hand is dipping back into the well of collaborative EPs with recent breakout internet core artists after dropping the very solid Weatherglow  collaboration with Weatherday earlier this year. Given that I enjoyed that project a lot and I love Parannoul this felt like a slam dunk. Unfortunately, no matter how much I listen to the opening track Hand  I'm just not crazy about it. Even compared to the B-sides dropped earlier this year it just sounds too much like a song that wouldn't have made the cu...

While yes I do try to often deliver some semblance of continuity in these rapid fire reviews to make them make sense. But at its core the series is just meant for me to cover records that I'm too late or don't have the time to talk about in full. So with that being said this is a mish-mash of different genres of hardcore and industrial that I'm stretching because it includes records I want to talk about. 40 oz. To Fresno  - Joyce Manor After releasing some of the most essential emo and pop punk albums of the 2010's with their self-titled debut and 2014's Never Hungover Again  it hasn't exactly been a parade of critical or even fan acclaim since then. While I certainly don't think the bands releases have been terrible or anything they certainly haven't matched the energy of their earlier work. On this new album which runs out at a tight 16 minutes and change I was hoping that the band could find a way to translate their new feelings into music that was as...

So I took a week off to recover from consecutive Ty Segall, Cloud Nothing, Idles and Black Midi moshpits. I think I deserved it. But now we're back and given how weak the last two classes of singles have been I decided to just combine the last two weeks and find the best five songs of the bunch to present to you here. Hopefully next week we will be back to regularly scheduled programming.  5.  Tarantula  - Azealia Banks While it can be hard to predict what Azealia will do outside of her music career, generally speaking when she drop new tracks the tend to deliver and Tarantula  is no different. Just in time for Halloween she delivers an eerie club jam with monotone vocals that come off more threatening than most songs trying to be genuinely scary do. The stiff club beat and organ style synths clear up a track with an alarmingly tight aesthetic.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TmAyCwgl_gQ 4.  Moth To A Flame  - Swedish House Mafia Feat. The Weeknd Swed...

Poppy is a Youtuber, singer, songwriter and wrestler? Not really. She is a genre and medium fuser known for elaborate visuals that connect to her music and a sound that blends together bubbly electronic synth pop and brash pummeling punk and metal. Flux  is Poppy's 4th studio album and follows an extremely prolific run dating back to last years I Disagree  which included a few EP's and a soundtrack album.  Review By Lav: You guys should be used to me talking about Poppy by now. I enjoyed her music during her distinctive synth pop era which saw her breaking into the music business after a pretty unique stint on YouTube. I enjoyed her sound once she started to push into heavier and heavier territory, and I really enjoyed her sound once she threw everything against the wall on a true experimental rock EP in 2019 . While I think it's nearly impossible to cover absolutely everything Poppy has had her hands in over the past 16 months or so I have at least heard all of it and tr...

Tyler showed up earlier this year with credentials as a photographer and tagged along through most of 2020 penning judgement on the quality of each of the album covers accompanying the albums and EPs I reviewed for the blog. So just like I'm recapping the year musically Tyler put together a list of his 10 favorite album covers of the year for Day 2 of List Week 2020.  10. HAIM - Women In Music Pt. 3 I like this cover. Knowing the previous aesthetics of the sisters, I think this fits in well with their indie vintage photo style and it encompasses what their style is and has been for a while. It has a lot of detail packed into the simple photo and it takes time to look into all the background gems. I appreciate that the sign in the back is used as the title and it adds itself into the composition rather than sitting on top of it. Overall I think this is wildly successful and adds to the list of the other very strong covers in their discography. 9. Moses Sumney - Grae This cover is gr...

While the first month of this new decade never really knocked me off my feet, there were still plenty of worthwhile releases, which is especially impressive given how little material usually comes out around this time. Poppy dives further into the world of experimental rock than ever before penning some of her hardest hitting metal tunes and continuing to push the envelope of her rock and pop crossovers on this very solid outing. Review Beach Slang returns with a record that throws out the old and replaces it with the even older as they channel the bouncy dad rock of the 1970's to mixed results.  Review Selena's return had the potential to be a big one but with an incredibly hit or miss tracklist Rare  is more like listening to a rushed album than one five years in the making.  Review Eminem has some great beats from Dr. Dre and plenty of great features from hip hop icons new and old, but unfortunately none of this can stop him from being himself...

Poppy is a computer girl, and the meticulously fashioned cult leader creation of Moriah Rose Pereira. She first broke out as a YouTube star before signing to Mad Decent records in 2017 and releasing her debut record Poppy.Computer . Her first record is full of short cleanly produced sugary sweet synth pop tunes, but since then she has begun to undergo a fast artistic transition. On her second record 2018's Am I A Girl?  she began to loosely adapt some of the sounds of genres like nu metal and post-hardcore into her songs , and the result was a unique and compositionally varied series of tracks that proved she was even more versatile as a vocalist than anyone thought. Last year on her critically acclaimed Choke  EP she took this even further collaborating with Rap Metal band Fever 333 and going full on Slint on the track Meat , and I Disagree  looks to be her furthest descent into the world of hardcore rock music yet. Review By Lavender: I have been a pretty proud m...