Seattle surf-noir band La Luz have unveiled their new track Don’t Wanna Be Anywhere. Their Ty Segall-produced sophomore LP Weirdo Shrine drops 7 August. Brimming with throbbing bass, tricky stickwork, haunted organs, slinky surf guitar, and angelic four-part harmonies, the track showcases La Luz at their very best.
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. 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—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 realized this vision. 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 across eleven tracks, from the opening credits siren song of Sleep Till They Die to the widescreen, receding-skyline send-off of Oranges and its bittersweet epilogue, True Love Knows.
In describing Weirdo Shrine, Segall remarked that it gave him a vision of a “world…burning with colors [he’d] never seen, like mauve that is living.” These hue-based allusions are apt: the sound of La Luz is (appropriately) vibrant, and alive with a kaleidoscopic passion. Weirdo Shrine finds them at their most saturated and cinematic.
The full tour listing:
16 October – Brighton, Bleach
17 October – Salford, The Eagle Inn
19 October – Glasgow, The Hug and Pint
20 October – Leeds, Brudenell Social Club
21 October – Cardiff, Four Bars at Dempseys
22 October – London, Hoxton Square Bar and Kitchen
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