Shane Lavers reminds you (me) that we’re all just hideous little miracles on an unlikely sphere. Ash after the fireworks, plastic in the riverbed, jokes at the funeral, ugly feelings in warm skin. It’s all a beautiful thing (or at least sounds that way under his watch). Lavers writes, sings, and produces music as the ascendant Chanel Beads, an uncontainable artist project that revels in confusion, staring down the world with a trickster’s smile. Since last year’s release of his debut album Your Day Will Come, more of the world’s beginning to stare back, pressing play, buying tickets, etc. It’s maybe been a bit too much of that.
“The album isn’t for everyone,” the Minnesota-raised Lavers tells us. “But it might be palatable enough that more people are hearing it than they should. I feel very lucky and a little cynical. I didn’t expect people in Europe to care. [Laughs] But I’m still trying to learn how to not field too much input from strangers. It used to be like, ‘Okay, let’s go for it as hard as we can.’ Now I’m making sure I’m doing what I want.”
So far, that’s meant lots of dead-serious fun. At the start of his filmed set in Tokyo, Lavers tests his mic with two hair-raising screams before a grin flashes across his face. “Coffee Culture,” a lush orchestral piece made with cracked VSTs and a qwerty DAW keyboard, mocks excess as it burrows into your bone marrow. He gleefully injects still photos into videos: a Star Trek character pops up in the euphoric dance track “let’s go out tonight,” and nuclear-flash photos of collaborators Maya McGrory (who also makes spellbinding music as Colle) and Zachary Schwartz (a violin wizard) interrupt “Live Video.” His earlier releases featured the tag “mineral water” (“I decided ‘water’ wasn’t specific enough,” he says) and his album art features a public domain image, limiting his own ability to profit from his art. On that album, processed vocals often feel sugar-sweet, as if you’re hearing an inner child beamed through moonlight. Onstage, they’re rendered more abrasive, punk leaking through the pitch fx.
“I’m just using Ableton stock plugins,” Shane says, laughing. “I’m not a sonic guy! I don’t really feel like a producer. My goal is to make something with lasting emotion that doesn’t feel tied to any one decade, but also doesn’t feel like this kind of muddy soup. I don’t want to just paint with primary IKEA colors. We have this impulse to take the moon, something no one can own, so we can give it away to one person we love… It’s romantic and gross at the same time. I’m interested in writing honestly about things like this that trouble me.”
[Editor’s Note: Shane also plays at least a half-dozen ‘traditional’ instruments, though he seems to rejoice in making no difference between digital and analogue. His vinyl’s front-cover sticker lists the source of his sounds, including “Facebook marketplace hi hat no brand” and “google translation text to speech.” I’d be lying if I didn’t list this approach as one of many reasons why I appreciate his music.]
The Chanel Beads frontman has been painted as alternative’s second-coming; an heir to Bon Iver’s Jagjaguwar kingdom; a complementary foil to The Dare’s New York hedonism; a sweetheart Midwesterner with Seattle angst; a talented provocateur with an underrated Lot Radio set; the natural product of someone who holds Carti, Lou Reed, Brian Wilson, DMX, and the novelist Agota Kristof in equal regard; a musician you should like because Caroline Polachek and Nourished By Time do too… Yeah.
To me, really, he’s a songwriter worth reading. “Bossman’s picking through your pocket” on “Altruism,” “Dust is falling in the god ray” on “Ef,” “You owe it to yourself to believe in something else” on “Police Scanner.” He knows that grief can live in any smile, that life on this rock is earnest and absurd. This alone makes him one of music’s most honest voices. Even, maybe especially, when he's pulling your leg.
This originally appeared in Pigeons & Planes' "25 Artists To Watch in 2025."