Lavender Diamond make morning peacefolk. It's the kind of music that can restore faith in humankind, returning us to a time when touchy-feely types loved everything unconditionally. Essentially the vehicle for L.A.'s Becky Stark (adorned in antique wedding gowns), Lavender Diamond sound like Linda Ronstadt leading a daisy chain gang on their ascension to heaven: rough, angelic, deceptively simple songs rising to bittersweet heights. Stark's silk-curtain voice could make gardens grow and her lyrics are ponderings of love and the afterlife. Care for a little self-reflection with your fringe folk? Their four-song EP, The Cavalry of Light, is packed with such heavy inquiries as: "Why do I fear/what I can be?"
The track "In Heaven There Is no Heat" begins with a moody falsetto but builds up to a joyful, tambourine-shaking chorus ("Dream the kind of life that you will find/that kind of love that lasts forever"). It's another example of the '70s singer-songwriterdom all over Lavender Diamond, evidenced by the Karen Carpenter vibe in Stark's delivery and the band's occasional string arrangements.
In the hands of someone less sincere, this music could be tossed aside as treacly Biblical musings. However, Stark's example is that universal love can exist independent of organized religion. It's the sort of pastoral embrace currently championed by post-'60s revisionist rag Arthur (in fact, Stark's own Peace Comics can be found in its pages). Ultimately this is healing music—as I've played the disc all week, the dying ficus tree in my kitchen has sprung back to life. No joke.
