A Place You Grew Up In (2023 Laveda album) – Queen City Sounds and Art

Queen City Sounds Podcast S5E33: Laveda

Laveda formed as a dream pop band in Albany, New York in 2018. The core duo of Ali Genevich and Jake Brooks released two outstanding albums of deeply introspective, atmospheric and tender records with 2020’s What Happens After and 2023’s A Place You Grew Up In. As though the title of the latter was a prompt to evolve creatively Laveda relocated to New York City the same year and whether it was already happening then or more came together once in the big city the band evolved in a decidedly different sonic direction without losing its instincts for crafting memorable melodies and vivid, emotionally vibrant and immediately relatable lyrics. 2025’s Love, Darla marked a change in style for a more gritty, more angular, almost No Wave sound as though Genevich and Brooks had delved further into the Sonic Youth catalog and found their way to the likes of Live Skull and, perhaps unrelated, The Cleaners From Venus. The new album sounds like the work of people who made the move to pursue their art further and didn’t come out the other side jaded. Instead transformed and challenged to do something to reflect their own development as people and artists.

Listen to our interview with Genevich and Brooks on Bandcamp and follow Laveda at the links below.

Laveda on Instagram

Laveda on Facebook

Laveda LinkTr.ee

Laveda’s Gently Poignant “Troy Creeps” is a Simple Song About the Complex Maze of Human Relationships

Laveda crafts the build of “Troy Creeps” expertly with the minimal guitar riffing and steady drum beat with electronic swirls in the background while the vocals carry the emotional weight of the song. It’s a song about complex feelings and the intricacies of social interactions and relationships with a real insight into how things can get messy when your heart has overlapping loyalties and burdened with uncertainties and all colored by past experiences that mean everyone comes to every situation with assumptions and emotional scars and trauma that can completely dictate every situation unless you take the time to talk them out some and not act on impulse. This simple song with its emotionally charged yet elegantly crafted melody does justice to that everyday reality that often goes overlooked and isn’t often the subject matter of pop songs that focus on love and life as something that is part of our minds with absolute clarity. It’s a realistic song about how we are and we we can extend that understanding to others if we approach each other with honesty and integrity. Watch the video for “Troy Creeps” on YouTube and follow Laveda at the links below. Laveda’s new album A Place You Grew Up In released on April 14, 2023 on digital, vinyl, cassette and CD and all can be purchased through the Bandcamp link.

Laveda on TikTok

Laveda on Facebook

Laveda on Instagram

Laveda’s “Clean” is a Heartbreaking Lament of Feeling Adrift From the Things You’ve Lost

The setting for the Laveda single “Clean” is a beach town in the off season and how those places can seem both incredibly lonely but also free of distraction and a good place to gain clarity and space for your psyche. The song itself is full of open spaces and nearly whispered vocals wandering amid gently strummed guitar and the hint of a background drone. The scene begins at dusk and the female lead, presumably Laveda singer Ali Genevich, journeys through the dark of night and the incoming tide, having a drink on a blanket and unwinding with running and dancing in the sand while offering poetic images of what it’s like to be well into adulthood and coming to terms with how things have changed in life and a desire to return to your roots to make some sense of your present but knowing that you just can’t because it’s largely gone and memories of how it wasn’t always so great and even if your current mindset isn’t some portrait of someone’s ideal or your own that you would rather not go back to a time in life when you didn’t know better, as appealing as it can seem in moments of vulnerability and melancholic reverie. It’s a heartbreaking song in a gentle way that poignantly captures what it feels like to be deeply ambivalent, adrift and needing to trust in where the seemingly aimless flow of your life will take you. Watch the video for “Clean” on YouTube and connect with Laveda at the links below. The group’s new album A Place You Grew Up in drops on April 14, 2023.