What Happens After

Laveda

What Happens After

(Color Station)

 

What Happens After is really the question isn’t it?  What happens after we’ve endured the horrifying Trump presidency, after the pandemic, after the media shifts its focus away from all of the Black Lives Matter protest marches for justice, after yet another war, or religious sanctioned genocide, after the planet’s atmosphere turns to carbon monoxide and cooks much of the life on the surface and in the sea?  What a mess we’ve made of things.  It feels like we, as a whole, never learn from our collective mistakes.  We really can’t seem to get along.  We really can’t seem to avoid not feeling cheated by some change that hurts us in some way, be it financially, religiously, misplaces us, or hinders our conveniences, so we do what we can to get things back to the way they were.  Is there really progress, or just a push and pull between all kinds of various factions fighting for temporary supremacy?  Is this mess really what we want to hand off to our youth?  A youth, that at this point, can only ask themselves “What happens after” everything has already blown up? 

 

All the kids are fucked up

No the kids don’t care about love again

And everybody’s caught up

With the same growing pains of their ways

 

So go the lyrics in the first part of the chorus for the powerfully epic ballad of encouragement “L.”  Yes, the kids are fucked up.  They’re fucked up because we’re all fucked up.  All the kids come into the world searching for meaning, and their teachers are the adults who are even more fucked up and hopeless.  Ali’s comforting vocals have to remind us “you’re not a mistake.”

 

The debut album by this New York duo asks a lot of the types of questions mentioned above in this emotionally charged, and frankly exciting album.  An album full of beautiful atmospheric washes mixed with striking walls of guitar noise, and a low end that at times is felt more than heard.  I know an album is a good one, when my favorite song changes every time I listen.

 

My introduction to Laveda came with the stratospheric “Dream, Sleep,” as Ali Genevich pleads urgently for a break amidst all of the chaos.  The dream and the sleep become quite threatening here.  The next single was the very unusual sounding, yet incredibly catchy “Better Now.”  I didn’t know what to make of this song for a long time.  Jacob Brook’s vocal is altered to a phony deep tone, where he repeats the ominous line: “she was seventeen when she looked at me / I doubt she knew what she was in for.”  The only thing is, I couldn’t (and can’t) stop playing this song over and over again.  In context of the album, the song’s message becomes clearer that the deep voice is coming from the Earth after everything has “turned to grey” and “there’s no turning back.”  A wearied messenger for the young girl looking for “Neverland.”

 

The opening salvo, “Ghost,” on the album is a horrifying and sad duet detailing a struggle for life in the midst of some sort of apocalyptic disaster like a nuclear holocaust.  In fact, I don’t think I’ve heard so much nuclear end of the world imagery since Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s Welcome to the Pleasuredome.  The mostly instrumental “CND” is an industrial soundscape with a scratchy recording of a statement about our society’s obsession with apocalypse.  It acts as an explanation for our televangelist preachers and their end of days pleas for donations.  This would have fit nicely onto Front 242’s album Official Version.

 

“Rager,” as implied by its song title is an absolute scorcher!  This straight-ahead song gets louder and more intense as it progresses.  It’s a tragic and depressing anthem that could and should get an audience bouncing around and singing along with this bleak chorus:

 

Now it’s on fire

There’s nowhere left to wander

Soon everyone dies

We’ll never find another

 

As the album progresses everything turns to more personal matters of the heart.  “If Only (You Said No)” acts as the LP’s power ballad – a song full of misguided devotion.  “Child” comes on with a soaring chorus and an admission that sometimes one feels like reverting to the lost innocence and neediness of childhood.  The sad reflection of “Blue Beach” has a haunting beauty that reminds me a little bit of Nirvana’s “Something in the Way.”  The album closes with “color,” a musically meditative reprise of “Blue Beach,” with a thoughtful and somewhat uplifting spoken message: “And I think it’s lovely the way we can see the world and the way we can see time / It’s lovely how it rains outside.” 

 

Perhaps there is hope.  We could be going through growing pains.  We may need to hit bottom before finding out how best to recover – to become better as people and better as a collective.  Maybe the kids will figure out a solution.

 

(https://lavedamusic.bandcamp.com/)

Laveda "L" (session video)