Lav's Music Corner

Another big week of new releases, let's get it. <3 5.  Let Them Live  - Death's Dynamic Shroud DDS release about 9 albums and 200 songs a year and generally, I'm pretty iffy on them but this single really works for me. I love the versatility of vocal samples throughout. I also love the very vibrant and futuristic beat which builds and builds and eventually gets these wiry guitars right at the end it's a very focused and well-executed rendition of their sound.  Listen 4.  N/Y  - The Haxan Cloak It has been 10 god damn years since this masterful dark ambient project last released new material. What he returned with is sonically very different, but honestly I'd be more surprised after all this time if it sounded the same. With stuttering drums and distant booming electronica this feels closer to something Prurient was doing around the last time we got new Haxan Cloak music. It trades out nuance in between the cracks for pummeling intensity and comes out the othe...

5.  Soul Capturer - Animal Collective The "single version" attached to this song feels particularly funny after the band took a big swing on a 21-minute lead single.  This isn't one of those Animal Collective songs that blows me away immediately with some kind of catchy refrains or wild instrumentation. But the longer the track goes on the more its hypnotic loops go to work on me. The watery sounds of Avey Tare's solo music leak into these tracks in a way that wasn't explicitly present on their last project but they manage to make solid use of it. Listen 4.  HEALMODE  - Jeff Rosenstock This is a song I've gone back and forth on a LOT. There are elements of its amateurish nature with the imperfect vocals and simple instrumentation that were grating right out of the gate. But the more I sat with the song and dug into its vivid lyrical details I started to develop a connection with it. Ultimately I've started to like the song quite a bit and Jeff Rosenstock i...

2020 was the year where the only thing anyone could talk about was how bad 2020 was. Journalistically it was disappointing to see so many dive headfirst into the cliche slightly self-absorbed reactionary notions of writing about the modern day. Ultimately though I have no choice on this list but to recap the last 12 months of music as best I can, but here on the Songs list I try to take in as little outside noise as humanly possible. Regardless of where an artist is in their career, how popular or successful a song was or how critically acclaimed it is, these are my 101 favorite songs of the year as of December 30th, 2020. A year from now, month from now or even a week from now my opinions could change but as the door closes on this curious year I did everything I could to paint a truthful list of the best tracks I heard on any EP or album this year, and here it is. <3 101. Kinda Dark  - Destroyer Dan Beyar's sophisticated indie pop has never sounded as nocturnal as it does acro...