Lav's Music Corner

V  - Unknown Mortal Orchestra If you've surprised this review ended up in a rapid fire, join the club. I've long been a champion of this band and I've liked some of the singles from this album a lot including That Life  which was among my favorite singles of 2021. I was pretty excited for the album to come out and I listened to it immediately but somehow it just managed to fall through the cracks in a sea of notable records released in the last month and change. But I do want to get my thoughts out on the record in some formal way given how much I've talked up the band's previous material. While there are definitely things that make this record unique in the band's discography so much of what they've always been known for is on display. Take the opening track The Garden  which displays some of the same psychedelic guitar tones, infectious refrains, and circular structure that have made so many great UMO songs in the past. Unfortunately, the next four songs a

Destroyer is a Canadian indie pop band fronted by Dan Bejar who have been active since the late 90's running simultaneously with his involvement in Canadian music collective The New Pornographers. Despite acclaimed records in the 2000's like Streethawk: A Seduction  and Destroyer's Rubies  the project hit its most recognizable and acclaimed point in the 2010's with back to back records that remain some of the best work of the decade. Review By Lavender: I was very excited for this record before I had ever heard a note of any of the singles. 2011's Kaputt  and 2015's Poison Season  are among some of my favorite indie pop albums of the last decade, with the prior being one of the best indie pop records of all time. In 2017 Destroyer dropped a weird transitional record that seemed rushed, but with the three year gap between ken  and Have We Met  I was hoping that this would be a more fully fledged return to form from Destroyer, and even though it doesn't

The New Pornographers are a Canadian music collective that has been releasing acclaimed indie records for almost two decades now. The bands 2000 and 2005 records Mass Romantic  and Twin Cinema  are well respected and critically acclaimed records that most indie fans of the 2000's are very familiar with. The band received a boost in popularity in this decade when one of their long time member Dan Bejar found massive critical acclaim as a solo artist under his Destroyer moniker in 2011 with Kaputt  and again in 2015 with Poison Season . Review By Lavender: The New Pornographers are one of the most consistent artists in the modern indie scene, despite not really having a commonly agreed upon single classic record the band has a sound all their own and execute on it pretty well one album after another. Even a full decade after their debut the band was still making good material on their last two records, 2014's surprisingly solid Bill Bruisers  and 2017's decent Whiteout