Lavinia’s New Urgently Heavy Emotional Album Packs A Welcome Invitation To Reflect

The new album from Lavinia — called Sallowed and out July 26 via Pax Aeternum — situates heavy cascades of emotional loss in a large, sonic suspension wherein the subtle nuances of those situations can be not just examined, but deeply felt. The band have funneled some of the energy and weight of post-rock into directly emotional, ultimately urgent song structures that feel well-poised to course through listeners and get them to sit still and contemplate. The music feels like the perfect soundtrack to sitting alone on the beach as the sun goes down, pondering what brought you to that moment — good and bad — and where you’ll be going from here, besides those you’ve met along the way, whether or not they’re still with you. Even if you don’t have an actual beach to go to when listening to this album, turning it on and closing your eyes can provide a similar experience. It’s almost surprisingly captivating while never getting too unstable or overwhelming for its own good.

The album never feels fully immersive in its musical presentation. Instead, you have a space to sit with this music and chart your own path in the space that’s been carefully and alluringly outlined by the band, who according to them are exploring the feeling of struggling against losing the “outside world” while growing up in New Hampshire. They’ve constructed their music to feel like a guide towards an ending point of a kind of emotionally despondent resignation to loss held in the record’s epic almost ten minute closing track.

The band feature a range of experienced talent, and the involved musicians’ experience no doubt help them make a truly unique, enticing splash in a delicate area of the music community wherein many paths have already been walked. Their sonically wide creations are smoothly and confidently constructed, with straightforward surges soon making way for tasteful texture that as a whole, really encapsulates the bumpy flow of being torn between extremes of love and loss on a personal level. Rather than going overly “big,” their music feels intimate. Repeatedly, they don’t even have any accompanying vocals at all for extended periods adding up to minutes of a single song, which reinforces the strength of both their music and the experience that can be had with it.

5/5 Stars

Pre-order the album here and listen to some below.