La Luz – Bandwidth

KEXP Presents: La Luz

Sam Hart — Tue, 08 Sep 2015 13:18:01 +0000

Armed with songs from its new album Weirdo Shrine, the Seattle surf-rock band La Luz lit up the KEXP studio during its stunning recent live session. Mixing dark reverb with brighter tones, the band delved deeper into sun-drenched songs like this one, “Don’t Wanna Be Anywhere.”

SET LIST

“Don’t Wanna Be Anywhere”

Watch La Luz’s full performance on KEXP’s YouTube channel.

Review: La Luz, ‘Weirdo Shrine’

Katie Presley — Wed, 29 Jul 2015 23:00:00 +0000

The surf rock of La Luz is marked by more than just the reverb on Shana Cleveland’s guitar. For, just as the art of surfing is harder than it looks, guided as it is by a deep understanding of subterranean forces, so too the heavy tides of the Seattle quartet’s music rely on more than just sonic signatures. Like most physically demanding endeavors, surfing looks simple when practiced by people most familiar with the effort involved. Perfectly riding a wave seems as uncomplicated in theory as doing a single push-up — easy, that is, until you learn the first thing about muscle.

Hidden muscle is also the defining characteristic of La Luz’s sophomore album, Weirdo Shrine. Its riffs seem effortless because they’re played by Cleveland, who was revealed as an extremely nuanced guitarist on SC & the Sandcastles’ Oh Man, Cover the Ground, her solo album from earlier this year. Weirdo Shrine‘s lyrics are drenched in distortion and drying them off reveals an obsession with death that, unfortunately, La Luz comes by honestly. (The band was involved in a near-fatal car accident while on tour in 2013.) The album’s production is fuzz-heavy and lo-fi, a product of garage-rock kingpin Ty Segall running the boards. Even the band’s harmonies — performed at various times by Cleveland, drummer Marian Li Pino, keyboardist Alice Sandahl and bassist Lena Simon — pack a punch in their sweetness; the opening track, “Sleep Till They Die,” sounds like what might have happened if Mountain Man practiced in a beachside garage.

Misreading Weirdo Shrine as an album of breezy surf-rock is akin to dismissing a sun-bleached surfer as spacey and passive – possibly true but hardly the whole story, since surfers regularly traverse conditions that can kill an untrained person. Rock music played by a novice may not have fatal consequences, but missing the excellence couched in simplicity can lead to more soulful damage. Listening to Weirdo Shrine, close attention will be rewarded: There’s a deep intensity and knowing behind all that mellow.

First Listen: Shana Cleveland & The Sandcastles, ‘Oh Man, Cover The Ground’

Katie Presley — Sun, 17 May 2015 23:03:00 +0000

Shana Cleveland maintains a Flickr account to showcase her watercolor paintings of “famous faces and drawings.” The collection, now numbering in the 60s, is drawn in subtle grayscale washes, with special focus on eyes and the way light hits, for example, Diana Ross’ bouffant. They’re drawings by someone who looks closely, studies detail and, by the simple fact of her attention, implies a deeper story. Whatever peaceful, burbling fount Cleveland taps while drawing and illustrating, she’s returned to it for Oh Man, Cover The Ground, her first solo album.

Though she’s been playing with a rotating lineup of musicians known as Shana Cleveland & The Sandcastles for six years, Cleveland is best known as the guitarist and singer for Seattle girl-group/surf-rock hybrid La Luz. Oh Man… is to the work of La Luz what Karen O‘s solo project was to the Yeah Yeah Yeahs: a clear landing pad for a rock star having sunlit-bedroom thoughts instead of spotlit-sold-out-venue ones. As Cleveland has explained it, this record is the soundtrack to “being inside your own head all the time in the outside world.”

Cleveland’s vocals are delicate and inward-facing, going lo-fi fuzzy around the edges whenever she approaches volume. But because several tracks open with extensive instrumental sections that showcase her impeccable, rootsy fingerpicking, the overall impression of Oh Man… is one of intricacy without fragility. She’s got the same warble to her voice as Thao Nguyen, as she lets her voice break or curve upward at the end of a word just often enough to foster intimacy and accessibility at the same time. Nguyen plays her vocals for energy and propulsion, though, while Cleveland plays hers for tenderness. “Potato Chips” and the title track are lullabies by any other name, and the addition of enveloping cello to “Golden Days” and “Sucking Stones” add down to the nest. The addition of harmonies, handclaps and tambourines elevate Oh Man, Cover The Ground‘s pulse at various points, but they never overtake the artistic directives Cleveland revealed first in those watercolors: Slow down. Pay attention.

Six Pics: La Luz, Craft Spells, The Shivas And The Bilinda Butchers At Comet Ping Pong

Alex Schelldorf — Wed, 11 Mar 2015 18:19:32 +0000

It’s been a brutal winter, so forgive me if my projections of warmth have started to include visions of 1960s summer dance parties headlined by surf king Dick Dale. But Tuesday night — and well into the wee hours of Wednesday morning — at least part of that vision became reality at D.C.’s Comet Ping Pong.

With tickets sold out in advance, the Guy Fieri-approved pizza house filled to capacity for a show featuring four West Coast bands with strong pop sensibilities. San Francisco dream-poppers The Bilinda Butchers opened, setting a mellow tone — then Portland surf-pysch act The Shivas undid that, jolting the crowd when guitarist Jared Molyneux howled into the band’s first song without warning. More than 40 minutes later, ears must have been ringing in The Shivas’ wake.

In the fourpiece’s return to D.C., Craft Spells played an uneven set that peaked early when the group’s architect, Justin Vallesteros, hurled himself at drummer Brock Lowry. It wasn’t till after midnight that their fellow Seattleites La Luz finally took center stage.

Undeterred by early technical issues, the Hardly Art signees kept the crowd at attention by cranking the reverb and turning up to an ear-piercing volume. The “Luzers” play a brand of surf that might evoke Shadowy Men On A Shadowy Planet before Dick Dale, but the band’s effusive joy and natural banter kept its set lightweight and beachy, just like my fantasies — with synchronized dancing that prompted cheers.

At night’s end, the only dream left unrealized may have been keyboardist Alice Sandahl’s threat to stage dive.

The Bilinda Butchers

The Shivas

Craft Spells

La Luz