Lav's Music Corner

Rina Sawayama is a Japanese-British pop singer who first broke through with a Clarence Clarity produced EP and broke out into the world of elevated pop and critical acclaim with her 2020 debut Sawayama . Hold The Girl  features a familiar roster of collaborators but focuses on the more emotionally earnest elements of Rina's music. Review by Lav: Hype is a fragile thing. Coming into the year if you had told me we were in for new Rina it would have shot to the top of my list and after an excellent lead single my excitement had only gotten stronger. The continued releases since then were far from disappointing, in fact, I like most of them. But they seemed to serve as foreshadowing for Rina slipping from her pedestal as a creative pop innovator to just another of the genre's very solid and reliable voices. Far be it from me to complain about that level of quality given that Hold The Girl  could still be among the better pop records released this year. It's really just that two...

After the first time this year that there were so many good songs I had to include an honorable mention, we've got the second week in a row of less than stellar results. So be it, there are a lot of good albums coming out recently and going forward to fill in the gaps.  5.  One Twenty Two  - Botch Remember Botch? Probably not as it's been like 20 years since the heavy metal band last released any new material. This new song won't necessarily explain the absence or push their sound forward into anywhere crazy or unpredictable it is raw as fuck and the repetition helps sell the catchy refrain it's built around. In a year where Gospel came out of nowhere to become a new critical darling, it isn't that farfetched to imagine a similar fate for Botch. Listen 4.  All You Do  - Magdalena Bay When B-Sides make the singles list you know it's been a slow week but that's just how the cards fell this week. This track which wasn't good enough to land on their somewhat...

Two weeks of early posts, one week late. As it comes, so it goes.  Enjoy <3 5.  Touch The Sun  - Cryalot If Sarah Bonito's second solo single as Cryalot doesn't click with you on purpose, try sticking with it because I had the exact same reaction and it's growing on me. The allegorical comparisons to Icarus start to add up and the hook is much stickier than it might get credit for on first listen. But it's really the song's dramatic sonic build-up to a sun-kissed and heavily distorted finale that sold me on its effectiveness.  Listen 4.  Copening  - Benjamin Clementine There aren't many artists who I was more excited to hear from in 2022 than Benjamin Clementine and what he delivered was a pair of songs that feel very within his wheelhouse. The first is this eerie chamber ballad with echoing piano and gentle but utterly commanding refrains. It may not be as expansive as his best work but it proves exactly why it was such an anticipated return.  List...

At the 11th hour, I returned home from vacation having only recently remembered I had to write and publish the best tracks of the week. Here they are. Enjoy <3. 5. 2001 - Foals While Foals have basically been in their dance-rock era for quite a while now they finally leaned heavily into the disco influence on this track and made their best single from this era. It's certainly not complicated and I wouldn't say it has much of the extravagant rush that you might expect from a good Foals track, but it's bouncy and charming in the way the good disco revival music has to be.  Listen 4. Funeral Solution  - Thee Oh Sees After not loving the last few Oh Sees records, this was a punch in the face that I was excited for. The band needs less than two minutes to absolutely pummel you with chugging riffs, short screamed vocal refrains and an absolutely filthy mix. This one is simple, it will crush you, you should let it. Listen 3. Through The Fires  - Angel Olsen Angel Olsen delive...

Charli XCX is a popstar unlike any other and one that really needs no introduction if you've been paying attention to music in any capacity. After scoring a few early radio hits, most notably Boom Clap , she turned her sights on experimental pop and hyperpop. Along the way she created some of the genre's most acclaimed songs and albums while working with some of its most innovative producers like A.G. Cook and Sophie. She is also responsible for jumpstarting the careers of numerous artists in the scene through collaborations on her projects.  Review By Lav: It's hard to imagine somebody feeling neutral about Charli XCX. Either you're a big music fan and you've been following her career closely since 2015's Vroom Vroom  EP through her explorations and innovations within the world of hyperpop. Or alternatively you like radio music in which case she has disappeared completely from your radar since singing the hook on Iggy Azalea  Fancy , with maybe the sole excepti...

Musically the album is king. While singles top charts and generate radio play it's the album that fans stay up all night waiting for and constantly ask for online. Everything about these collections of songs seems just as innocuous as well, a collection of songs. But what they mean to us and what they meant to us specifically in 2020 is immeasurable. I listened to just over 250 albums this year and reviewed almost 200 of them and as usual there were tons of records I just didn't have time to get to. As much as I wish I could have listened to absolutely everything, this list is the best of everything I actually could listen to this year. These records range from solid and slightly inconsistent experiments to some of the best and most groundbreaking music of the year, and is neatly arranged into a 100-1 list as best as I could do, enjoy. 100. Freezepop - Fantasizer One of the premiere synth pop bands of the 2000's returned in 2020 with Fantasizer . While it came completely ou...