La Luz

For most, a brush with death would be cause for retreat, reflection, and reluctance, but Seattle band La Luz found something different in it: resilience. Having survived a high-speed highway collision shortly after releasing their 2013 debut LP It’s Alive, La Luz, despite lasting trauma, returned to touring with a frequency and tirelessness that put their peers to shame. Over the past year-and-a-half of performing, the band arrived at a greater awareness of their music’s ability to whip eager crowds into a frenzy. In response, frontwoman Shana Cleveland’s guitar solos took on a more unhinged quality. The basslines (from newly installed member Lena Simon) became more lithe and elastic. Stage-dives and crowd-surfing grew to be as indelible a part of the La Luz live experience as their onstage doo-wop-indebted dance moves.

When it came time to record Weirdo Shrine, their second album – due out 7 August – the goal was to capture the band’s restless live energy and commit it to tape. In early 2015, Cleveland and co. adjourned to a surf shop in San Dimas, California where, with the help of producer/engineer Ty Segall, they realised this vision. Tracking most of the album live in shared quarters, La Luz chose to leave in any happy accidents and spur-of-the-moment flourishes that occurred while recording. Cleveland’s newly fuzzed-up guitar solos – which now incorporated the influence of Japanese Eleki players in addition to the twang of American surf and country – were juxtaposed against the group’s most angelic four-part harmonies to date. The organs of Alice Sandahl and the drumming of Marian Li Pino were granted extra heft and dimension.

The resulting album is a natural evolution of the band’s self-styled ‘surf noir’ sound – a rawer, turbo-charged sequel that charts themes of loneliness, infatuation, obsession and death.

Price: £7.50 adv
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