Love, Darla (Sep 2025) by Laveda

A Place You Grew Up In (Apr 2023)	What Happens After (May 2020)	bb (Mar 2022)	F*** (Nov 2022)
Surprise (Sep 2022)	If Only (You Said No) (Nov 2019)	Better Now (Aug 2019)	Dream. Sleep. (Feb 2019)

New York-based quartet Laveda released their third album Love, Darla on Bar/None Records. The band is described as noise rock/shoegazing, and I would agree… sometime a touch of experimental and grunge, and if you like Kim Gordon or Sonic Youth, you’ll probably like Laveda.

My favorite track off of the new album is “Cellphone”, mostly because it’s the most pop/punk song you’re going to get. It’s about not wanting a cellphone and not caring if singer/guitarist Ali Genevich’s hair looks like a boy.

I think the single from the record is “Tim Burton’s Tower”, which the band really likes. It’s their oldest song on the album and originally didn’t sound anything like what exists now. Genevich explains, “There was this old church that you could see from our living room in Troy, NY and it always reminded me of something out of a Tim Burton film. I think I named the demo and planned on changing it at some point, but it stuck. We felt the song was strong enough at its core where we could really interpret it in any way and still make it sound cool, so we just rehearsed and recorded it in the same style as everything else on the album. I think it serves as a nice breath of fresh air on the record.”

I find that this type of music isn’t really my cup of tea, it’s just a little too unconventional for me… but I think where the band will really shine is seeing these songs performed live. All those odd changes in music notes and train-of-thought lyrics and low-energy to high-energy will be a blast to see live.

Speaking of which, Laveda is currently on tour.