Because Nandi Rose Plunkett is so generous with her voice it can be easy to overlook the complex systems of beats and instruments layered behind it. An album about love, familial legacy, and the inevitable decay of human life,Lavendermaintains an aversion to linear time. Plunketts grandmother, who was near the end of her life whenLavenderwas recorded and has died since stirs the titular flower in a pot on the stove and walks through her garden; Plunkett is carried in her mothers arms like a child; a relationship with a lover appears cross-sectioned in the now, all its conflicts and joys open to the light. Past and future converge on this album, which so badly seeks resolution to the stories in which human beings perpetually ensnare themselves, and so deeply knows that these stories have no ends.
