The Lavender Flu - Mow the Glass (2018)

The new Lavender Flu album, "Mow the Glass", was recorded in the living room of a small house on a cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean. You can hear it in the music. The Oregon Coast. The dream life of an Axolotl. The open sound of a band playing to an audience of endless water, sun, and sky. A bald eagle flew by the window every few hours; as if to remind the band where they really were. Still, the laughter was real, the freedom was magic, and the tambo was sprinkled like sugar.

"Heavy Air", the previous album, was a home recording project. The songs started with Chris on a guitar or a synth or a bowl of cereal and were built up from there. A rotating cast of friends and family helped flesh out the material. It could have been made in deep space or at the bottom of the ocean. Transmissions from a bedroom at the bottom of Pill Hill.

"Mow The Glass" is a reflection of the live experience. Four people playing together; working within the template of pop classicism. 35 minutes of music. This time, the Flu comes out of the water and spends a little more time on land: pop kicks, psychedelic derangement, beauty, spells cast via hate raga and rocker. The band moves backward, forward and sideways; often within the same piece. The music breathes. It doesn't deal in nostalgic regression or self conscious futurism. It just sounds like the Lavender Flu.

Or maybe Ursula K. Le Guin whispering to James Tiptree Jr. in heaven:
Follow the Flowers. They lead to a field of knives. Look to the Sewer. It's there where your teacher lies.

This music will crawl through your mind. Palpitating off the walls of incandescent android phone lights and lonely aching web pages. Streaming through reverse lives, lost in endless coded corridors, hallucinating connections to other humans via bitrate embrace.