Recorded over five years with a rotating cast of collaborators, the Lavender Fluâs sidewinding 2016 debut Heavy Air is a headphone masterpiece of deconstructed rock ânâ roll. Thirty songs deep and 76 minutes long, the album re-introduced ex-Hunches guitarist Chris Gunn to the world as a visionary tinkerer who could transform dissociative head trips into warm and weird sonic bliss.
In the years since recording Heavy Air, Gunnâs erstwhile studio project has cohered into a proper quartet consisting of the Blimpâs Lucas Gunn, Hunches drummer Ben Spencer, and Eat Skull alumnus Scott Simmons. On Mow the Glass, the Lavender Fluâs first album for In the Red Records, the band ditches most of Heavy Airâs addled roaming. While still lit from within by swirling turmoil, Mow the Glass is a more focused exercise in songcraft, a succinct 35 minutes that finds the Lavender Flu funneling their chaotic wont into more âproperâ pop forms.
The record begins and ends with an invitation that doubles as sunlit promise and vespertine threat: âFollow the flowers,â Gunn implores on both sides. Given his bandâs skill at riding country-tinged lilts into full-blown psych freakouts and vice versa, Gunnâs invitation can and will lead anywhere: a verdant clearing, a freshly filled grave, a glittering ocean, a miasmic swamp.
And thatâs the whole thrilling deal with the Lavender Flu. The sonic signposts are legible enoughâanyone whoâs spent time with Royal Truxâs canted tracks, Black Lipsâ rowdy revivalism, or Gunnâs own past work with the Hunches will be more or less comfortable in Lavender Fluâs gnarled worldâbut they canât always be trusted. Gunn and his bandmates are wily guides through rock history, and Mow the Grass will spin you around until everything is a beautiful blur.
In the end, though, whether they are flailing full-tilt into the garage rock turbulence of âFloor Lordâ or settling into the dreamy Arcadian high of âReverse Lives,â the Lavender Fluâs many modes and manifestations lead to the same place: a beautiful beyond where everything that falls apart finds itself whole again.