LAVENDER FLU - Heavy Air 2LP

Highly recommended.

One of '16s best releases - long OOP, we found a supplier with copies. Without hearing the entire album, it's hard to grasp by whatever soundbite we include below, but heed the following "for the cadre of listeners out there looking for that heady stew, look no further, Lavender Flu’s world is a dense rabbit hole worth exploring & re-exploring".

A home-recording project open to experimentation but in love with songs, The Lavender Flu is masterminded by Chris Gunn (Hunches, Hospitals). A massive 30-song debut double-LP, Heavy Air was conceived over a period of years and outside of the genre concentration camps. Like Terrence Malick’s Tree of Life remade by the ghost of Phillip K. Dick, it’s psychedelic and dense, projecting sounds as images inside your head, layers & layers yielding new secrets with each listen. It winds a circuitous path through pop songs (My Time, Those That Bend - with a “Waterloo Sunset” vibe), blasted rockers (Fingers Like Wounds), beautiful instrumentals (Feel the Ground, Telepathic Axe), fractured folk (Between The Trees), weirder experimental pieces (Vacuum Creature, La-Bas), straight-up fried epics (Transcendental Hangover) and a maximal/minimal take on The Godz’ mantra-like ode to sun worship and a Townes Van Zandt tune that is derailed by a massive panic attack. Lyrics and melodies appear and reappear as half-remembered dreams or reconstructed memories. Traces of Big Star, Royal Trux, Brian Eno, Meat Puppets II and American Beauty abound but The Lavender Flu is its own beast.

“Stitched together with a ragged twine of thought, the album could prove exhausting to the uninitiated, but those who’ve found room for Gunn’s brand of veiled pop bombast will find Easter Eggs aplenty throughout this release. Out of the clamor and clash rise some beautiful moments of folk pop that wouldn’t seem out of place cozying up to some Elephant 6 disciples. Hell, for the cadre of listeners out there looking for that heady stew, look no further, Lavender Flu’s world is a dense rabbit hole worth exploring and re-exploring.”-Raven Sings The Blues