Lav's Music Corner

In my endless quest for rapid fire review topics we've landed here. Three new albums from bands that people were bumping when I was in middle school. Dance Fever  - Florence + The Machine It always surprises me how Florence + The Machine basically disappear between album cycles only to reemerge pretty much as popular as ever. This is their fifth album and it follows what I think is their least successful and least acclaimed record to date High As Hope . Maybe the fact that their previous album was a letdown made it even more surprising how quickly they slid back into favor off the strength of this record. It's easy to see why as this record gets off to a pretty strong start in the first half, particularly with the two great singles that kick the record off. While there is a bit of a drop-off it's hardly a plummet as the album's thesis of fusing rustic instrumentation with disco flavors provides a bassline of solid instrumentation. While it certainly has its moments of i...

I have nothing of any importance to say this week aside from the fact that it was the best week for new singles in quite a while. Enjoy <3 5.  Wild Child  - The Black Keys Dan and Patrick are back and clearly influenced by their spin as a Missouri Delta covers band because this is their busiest piece of original material in years. While it is instantly satisfying to see them turn back the clock and there's a guitar bridge on the song that can only be defined as "sweet", I'm not sure this is quite as infectious and instantaneous as their best material. Still loving the change of pace.  Listen 4.  Sweetest Pie  - Megan Thee Stallion (Feat. Dua Lipa) Is this a purely pop motivated turn for Megan, yes. But it's also a really enjoyable song with Dua's charming hook and the combination of typically hip hop centric trap drums with those walls of warbling synths that go together surprisingly well. I love that Dua is allowed more than just the hook on the song even ...

If all goes well there should be a number of rapid fire review posts going out this weekend the first of which is merely a pair of records I've been meaning to review for a while and mirror each other in a way that I feel very clever and very smart and very good at my job for thinking of when nobody else did /s, mostly. These are mostly covers albums by artists who have a very specific sound to thank for some of their original tracks and took a spin doing their own versions of some of the classic tunes from those sounds, whether it be Mexican folk music or delta blues.  Un Canto Por Mexico, Vol. II  - Natalia Lafourcade Part two of Natalia's renditions of classic Mexican folk songs is a record that I've been flirting with off and on for a few months since it came out. Since I'm not a native speaker and not as familiar with the original versions of these tracks I took my time pulling apart the various creative decisions she makes on the record given how much I've enj...

The Black Keys are an Ohio rock duo that emerged in the early 2000's as a youthful and fiery rock act with their blistering 2004 garage rock album Rubber Factory . The band rose from the underground into the rock mainstream with a change in style that saw higher recording quality and clearer mixing on the part of producer Danger Mouse over the course of 4 studio albums from 2008-2014. This included 2010's grammy award winning Brothers , known as the bands breakthrough album into the commercial rock realm as well as the fantastic El Camino  in 2011. The last release from the band came in 2014 with the critically average Turn Blue  and now four years later the duo has returned and chosen to self produce their 9th studio album Let's Rock . Review By Lavender: While The Black Keys have never been an envelope pushing genre defying rock group they do have a long running consistency of making excellent garage rock and contemporary rock. In their underground days they releas...