The Lavender Flu - 'Heavy Air' (Meds)

I don't feel guilt about the non-diversity of this vinyl accumulation, or even see my tastes as homogenous. Someone recently said something to me about the whiteness of it all, which pissed me off a bit. I was quick to point out that despite being largely rooted in rock and folk, there is a  proliferation of jazz and other black American forms here, as well as African and Asian indigenous musics – plus other outliers. What he really meant to say was that because I don't really like reggae and have few hip-hop or soul records, and my vinyl accumulation is so heavily weighted towards rock, that it was somehow racially problematic. Fuck that. We like what we like, and we like what we grow out of, and I come from a background that led to a heavy interest in indie, post-punk, and psych. This is a weird intro to write about the Lavender Flu's first album, a double LP collection that I would cite (along with its followup) as one of the finest examples of modern-day psychedelia. I bring up the whiteness of my records because this record definitely comes from the same lineage that I do (Flu leader Chris Gunn was a member of the Hunches, whose last album is a brilliant slice of post-garage energy), and that's probably a lot to do with why I like it; no one would describe this as 'urban'. This made me think about the very word 'psychedelia', which most people would probably use to describe Heavy Air, and what it even means anymore. It might be best to retire this term, unless you're using it to describe a very precise and historical time in rock music (like 13th Floor Elevators or the Nuggets collections). I don't hear many thowbacks to that era in the Lavender Flu, except for the cover of Bo & the Weevils 'My Time' here. Heavy Air is a lot to take in, and it's a bit of a mess by definition - a 'kitchen sink' approach that mixes half-formed songs, full-formed songs, and bedroom experiments into a lengthy sound quilt. The band name is apt - colourful and lush, but also with an undercurrent of instability. A lot of these tracks wobble on their hind legs, and even the more straight-forward presentations have a detuned viewpoint, not intentional obfuscation but just a nice, new angle. There's a few covers here - the Godz, Townes van Zandt, and John Fahey, but these are given the Lavender take. Home-fi techniques abound, though overall there's a clarity in the soundstage that avoids this being murky tape-piss, but also has an intimacy. A lot of these tracks are Gunn with just one other musicians, rather than a cohesive band (that comes on the next record). The scraps, on their own, wouldn't add up to much, but as incidental pieces tying together a whole it gels, and these smaller movements don't feel like throwaways, or even like there are two tiers of composition on the record. Whispered spoken voices, melting bells, reverberating string plucks, slow-paced rock drumming, droning organs, tape treatments that sound like birds – from this description and the length of this, it might sound like I'm describing some Elephant 6 style band, like the first Olivia Tremor Control record. But while Gunn is no stranger to melody, earworm hooks are largely absent, making this a pleasant mystery of a record that demands repeated listens. Overall it's quite an accomplishment, feeling like the summation of a lot of things that have been happening on the West Coast in the past decade. Scott Simmons, who put out this record, plays on a lot of tracks and also had a hand in Eat Skull and Helen, and the relationship between the three can be felt despite the different applications. Yes, it's white music, 30 tracks of it, and it's pretty fucking great.