Since the release of their 2000 debut record Corners, Toronto-based electronic duo LAL have become known both for their songs celebrating resistance and community and for their unwillingness to be placed in a neat box by the mainstream Canadian music industry. While these same notions loom large on singer Rosina Kazi and producer Nicholas Murray’s seventh album, Meteors Could Come Down, this time around, they’ve intentionally chosen to work with a minimalist palette of sounds. Using Detroit author and activist adrienne maree brown’s 2019 self-love book Pleasure Activism as a guiding compass, the eight songs here find LAL at their most emotionally unguarded, as they reflect on their experiences building and observing underground arts scenes for over two decades.
Murray’s gently thrumming beats perfectly complement Kazi’s smouldering and stark vocals, her poetic lyrics centred around healing and finding happiness in personal relationships. On songs like “Turn Water Into Blood” and “Who You Are,” the latter with its rallying cry “you can be who you are,” they impart wisdom that could easily be taken by the next generation of artists or activists. Recorded at the beginning of the year, the album has an urgency and uncertainty that feel aligned with the current moment of political collapse and global protest. But LAL aren’t interested in being doomsayers. Rather, Meteors Could Come Down envisions a future worth fighting for—one built on compassion and togetherness.
