Recorded over five years with a rotating cast of collaborators, the Lavender Flu’s sidewinding 2016 debut Heavy Air is a headphone masterpiece of deconstructed rock ’n’ 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, Gunn’s erstwhile studio project has cohered into a proper quartet consisting of the Blimp’s Lucas Gunn, Hunches drummer Ben Spencer, and Eat Skull alumnus Scott Simmons. On Mow the Glass, the Lavender Flu’s first album for In the Red Records, the band ditches most of Heavy Air’s 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 “proper” pop forms.