Lane 8 discovers his most matured state through cohesive fourth album, ‘Reviver’ [Stream]

by: Ross Goldenberg Jan 21, 2022

It’s the middle of January and Lane 8 just delivered an absolute work of art. If that sentence sounds even the slightest bit familiar, it’s not déjà vu. Flashback to nearly two years ago to the day and you’d find yourself in pre-pandemic times at the arrival point of Brightest Lights. Lane 8’s last LP simply laid the groundwork for the runaway case he’d make to eventually be crowned Dancing Astronaut‘s 2020 Artist of the Year. Three weeks into the new year is obviously way too soon to even consider opening up that conversation, but Lane 8 is setting his sights on potentially mimicking that cycle all over again with the submission of his senior album, Reviver.

With Reviver, This Never Happened‘s founding father thought he had originally pinned down what he wanted to accomplish through it: to “reinvent [himself] as a producer.” That ambition had been a recurring theme on all of his prior albums—including Brightest Lights, Little By Little, and Rise—but this time around, Lane 8 didn’t go about it in the same way. Throughout the free-flowing operation of Reviver‘s 13-part tracklist, Lane 8 explained that he soon learned that he didn’t need to deliberately reshape who he was as a producer. That evolution had naturally come to him during everything that occurred—from real-world events to his own personal experiences—in between his third and fourth album. We saw Lane 8’s creative maturation already come in spades through the group of Reviver singles. Preceded by the album’s title number, “What Have You Done To Me?” with Arctic Lake, the awaited “vaccine banger” now known as “Nuclear Lethargy,” and ultimately “Automatic” with Solomon Grey, Reviver began to take shape and encompass the dancefloor-centered tint that Lane 8 had been trending towards during its conception. And across Reviver‘s newly minted portion, that self-described “effortless” rebirth is realized even further.

Putting Lane 8’s “Winter 2021 Mixtape” opener and Reviver introduction on our top unreleased IDs of 2022 list was a nice little pat on our own back considering we already knew its arrival date ahead of time, but that didn’t take away from the fact that “Survive” with Channy Leaneagh was still the album cut—of the ones we’d previously come in contact with—that we were most looking forward to. “Survive” is only the tipping point to Reviver‘s sweeping grace, with every track that follows in its wake finely complimenting the one that came right before it. Through Lane 8’s remaining eight constituents, Reviver goes on to further execute its front-row masterclass in melodic house, including three respective pairs of follow-up meetings with Arctic Lake, Solomon Grey, and the forenamed “Survive” lyricist, “Red Lights” with Emmit Fenn, and a compact stream of driving standalone cuts like “Watermelon Wormhole”—the incredibly named second winter mixtape ID—”Illuminate,” “Trampoline Counting Stars,” and ultimately “Closer,” which refreshingly brakes the Reviver pace on its back end. In just short of an hour, Reviver sees through everything that Lane 8 had envisioned his fourth chapter would look like, with each of the 13 productions distinctively and cohesively validating the animated feel that he initially revealed would be at the core of his newest full-length release.

Stream Lane 8’s early entry for album of the year below.