Lavendine – Deep Blue (2025)
Born of challenges from medical difficulties to finding their path in a musical journey, Jana and Jacy Ayers come out on the other side as the duo Lavendine. Let me explain a little: following college, the pair headed to Nashville to pursue a musical career, but that didn’t quite work out according to hopes. Returning to Oklahoma, the sisters found success in ventures like a day spa and hosting a popular radio show; however, their fiery passion for music continued to burn. Medically, the sisters faced health challenges with “…Jana being diagnosed with a tumour near her brain stem, resulting in 80% hearing loss in one ear. Jacy experienced several surgeries, including one for an ectopic pregnancy.” The dream persisted, and today we bring you Lavendine’s debut album, Deep Blue.
Following their well-received singles, ‘Who Cares If I’m Alone’ and ‘Diamonds In The Sky’ – both tracks on the nine-track album – Deep Blue brims with duality and diversity. Uplifting and profound, confident and vulnerable, grounded and wistfully dreamy, Deep Blue is a toe-tapping walk through life with the Ayers sisters guiding the way. Jacy Ayers explains:
“…We wrote it after feeling tossed and tattered from the sorrow of grief and disappointment. The message and cadence of the experience you feel, while listening, will pull you along, just like when trials seem to suck you out to the deep and then in that moment of wrestling with your destiny and life’s challenges, the very thing that was drowning you is the current that carries you to your moment of deliverance.”
Deep Blue opens with ‘City Lights’ – a stirring leap into 90s alternative rock, dragging our ears back to the days of Alanis Morissette and Sheryl Crow. Filled with a powerful guitar and drums, their dulcet vocals dance across the single; however, as much as ‘City Lights’ has a lightness about it, Lavendine shows their darker side with the following ‘Waterless Cloud’. Heavier, weightier, and somewhat crushing, the pair toss you into a sonic whirlpool with the drums, guitar and bass whipping about.
The next step is the title track, and while there remains a sense of darkness, ‘Deep Blue’ is not as weighty. Yet, while there is a gentleness to the song carrying you across the sonic whirlpool, a shivering vulnerability lingers in the melody. We, or at least I, feel this delicate, skin-tingling vulnerability in the simplistic, acoustic ‘Feel My Way’ draped with piano-driven haunting.
Deep Blue holds a strong rock-inspired sound, but there are instances where a slip of folk and country filters into the song. A hush of country vocals whispers in ‘Let Me Be’, and a Sheryl Crow flair in ‘Who Am I To Say’.
A sophisticated album with Mark Needham, Ed Seay and Brian Pruit sprinkling their magic production dust with session musicians Daniel Levita, Jamie Muhoberac and Matt Chamberlain contributing, each track has its own personality, life, and overall authenticity. Which is my favourite? Not a question that is easy to answer. What I do know is that this album only increases my interest in Lavendine.
Find out more about Lavendine on their official website, Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), Instagram, YouTube and Spotify.
This artist was sent to us by Dead Horse Branding.
