Chanel Beads is a fitting name for the songwriting vehicle of Brooklynite Shane Lavers. Subbing the word “Beads” for Pearls - connoting the plastic replica of something luxurious and affluent. A copy. Not to say that Lavers’ music lacks authenticity - but when your hypnagogic post-everything project is befitted with the mark of “fake jazz,” a faux genre established by Steely Dan frontman Donald Fagen, you’re welcoming the idea that the music you’re making is an homage, intentional or not, to something existing, with history.
Your Day Will Come, the debut album by Chanel Beads (released on Jagjaguwar earlier this year), is a record lost in time. A greyscale dissemination on grief told through the fuzzy reworkings of traditional pop, rock and electronic structure, the album is a brisk 27 minutes but is overflowing with amazing ideas. Shane Lavers, who handles all production, knows how to manipulate existing genres and sounds into something for the now, The Blue Nile meets Cocteau Twins while downing tequila yerbs at Nowadays. Adorned with layers by vocalist/guitarist Maya McGrory and violinist Zachary Paul, Your Day Will Come deftly leaps from groovy two-step (“Police Scanner”) to baroque pop (“Your Day Will Come”) to trip hop meditations (“Idea June”) to Peter Gabriel a la So bass freakouts (“Embarrassed Dog”), all while maintaining the aura of flipping through an old photo album. The jump to Jagjaguwar, alongside fellow retro crate diggers Bon Iver and Angel Olsen, feels like a perfect fit.
Backlit throughout the show, Shane Lavers (above) and company were hardly more than active silhouettes during the hour-long set.
One thing I wasn’t expecting going into the live show was Shane’s outright abrasion - he commanded the stage like a punk frontman, screaming, reaching into the audience, shouting, pacing back and forth. It was pretty out there, especially considering the vibe of the music. It warrants catharsis, massive builds and dramatic strings and major moments of solace, but overall I’d say it has a relatively relaxed energy. Not so in the live setting. All around me, diehard fans sang every word back to Shane, an assorted crowd of Dimes Square girly pops and Greenpoint punks - standing in the second row, amidst a swirl of wild fans and with Shane’s eyes piercing into all of us despite the radiance of the backlighting, the energy was rowdy and intense, pure electricity flowing from the stage to the pit.
The set started with the end - “I Think I Saw,” the last track of Your Day Will Come opened the show, a dramatic staccato assault of strings, a massive crescendo and an explosive climax to prepare the audience for the evening of catharsis ahead of them. A wave of distorted violin, white noise, and Lavers’ electric flute flooded the crowd, left eager for more as the band launched into “Unifying Thought.” Lavers has a knack for writing sugary hooks that envelop you with their emotional potency and simplicity:
“Man up on the cross / Write-up from your boss / Focus on the live in your heart / I had a unifying thought / But I missed it.”
Shane Lavers (R) with guitarist and backing vocalist
Maya McGrory (L)
Evocative imagery that paints spiritual crisis and a dissatisfaction with the day to day, hoping for more and a deep sense of peace but facing endless uncertainty and strain. For a crowd of young twenty-somethings, words and feelings like that can really strike a chord. When Lavers sings on “Embarrassed Dog” that he wants to see himself unafraid, that’s something any of us can relate to. And of course, to bridge the gap between the artist and the listener, Shane hung at the edge of the stage, reaching for the hands of those in the front row, establishing a connection. It felt so human to just watch, it made you feel like you knew him. Purely authentic, with a slapping bass line and washes of violin to punch you right in the gut.
Shane Lavers doesn’t mince words - his songs are restless, punchy, and emotive, and the show flew by quickly. And yet, in spite of the bloodletting of the words, Shane stood his ground with a smile on his face the whole time. Especially when taking the backseat at the mic so Maya McGrory can take singing duties on “Idea June,” with the whole crowd singing back in their best falsettos: “I want to be with youuuuu.” It was heavenly. A dawn chorus grieving a romance that never existed in the first place, or at least was inundated by something darker: “I heard that you’re bad now / I think I’m glued onto your back now.”
The set was rounded out with other Your Day Will Come highlights like the post punk indebted ode to grief “Urn,” and even earlier singles like “Ef” and “True Altruism.” There were shouts from the audience for early Chanel Beads songs like “Male Friendship” to be played, to which Shane just smiled and shook his head no.
Processing grief can be a unique thing for anyone to attempt. A person is a person until they’re a funeral and then an urn and then ashes in the wind. Sometimes, the grief we feel at one moment can be potent until it becomes a dull ache, a soreness in your back that stabs until it settles back down, well-fed, into a restless sleep. When Shane Lavers allowed the grief of his older songs to pass by like a shadow, he gave himself the grace to be present in the now - to look back on the progress he has made, what new aches have come into his life, and how he can transmute them into something beautiful, haunting and brilliant, a fungal garden ripe for harvesting. Your Day Will Come, as will mine, as will Shane’s. But what you do before that day arrives, what smoldering embers you can make from your pyre, that’s what’s important. Shane is a tremendously inspired individual, and his ability to inspire others with his open-heartedness, his authenticity, is something really special. There’s some old saying about casting pearls before swine. I think I know what it means. Shane does too; that’s why he switched to beads.
- Aaron
