THE HITS KEEP COMING

THE HITS KEEP COMING

La Luz take on the world (read: semi trucks, cancer cells)

Martin Douglas

Since forming La Luz, Shana Cleveland has outrun the long arm of death not once but twice. Therefore, it’s not too far outside the realm of imagination that a big album release show, in the city where the band was formed, would make a good enough excuse as a celebration of life and an outpouring of gratitude.

In Seattle’s Belltown neighborhood, notable music venue The Crocodile—in its second location and third floor plan—was sold out and packed, right up to the fake reptile skeleton hanging from the ceiling, for an unofficial homecoming of sorts. Although the band’s singer-guitarist hasn’t lived in Seattle for the better part of a decade, residing in Los Angeles before a slightly pre-pandemic move to the Gold Rush-era mining town of Grass Valley, La Luz still have ties to the city beyond the relationships they’ve formed from living there for more than a decade. Now, after four albums on Sub Pop subsidiary Hardly Art, their fifth and most recent, News of the Uniuerse, was released on the label proper, adding a new wing to the house grunge built.

As La Luz took the stage with an almost entirely new lineup—aside from founder Cleveland, drummer Audrey Johnson, who joined the band in 2021, is the only band member with tenure—the stage setup was appealing in a way many modern bands attempt to utilize in order to evoke the vibe of a Significant Rock Show: flower arrangements—real or fake, take your guess!—wrapped around the mic stands. A huge projection screen displaying colorful, spacey imagery, augmenting the psychedelic direction the band has moved in on their newest LP. And even a little choreographed dancing during the instrumental “Moon in Reverse.”

The band ripped through a catalog-spanning set that was neither “just play the hits” nor “exclusively shilling the new album.” It’s a discography that has breathed life into indie rock, a musical style being lulled to unconsciousness by the quickly emergent genre known as PR-core; music that appeals primarily to soulless fucks who employ corporate-speak such as the word “creative” as a noun.

The day after the show, on an atypically warm and sunny Seattle spring day, Cleveland invited CREEM to the deck of a friend’s place she crashed at after the show. Located somewhere in the Upper Queen Anne neighborhood, the deck overlooked a pristine backyard, likely the product of a militaristic homeowners’ association. It also offered a gorgeous view of the Space Needle, the phallic monument to the long-defunct World’s Fair. Cleveland tries to make the most out of visiting Seattle; a solid plan when you don’t have to spend, on average, $75 a day to live here.

After attending college in Chicago, Cleveland found herself in the San Fernando Valley. Originally from Kalamazoo, Michigan, she knew she wanted to live on the West Coast, but the Valley wasn’t her jam. Cleveland says her mother took a trip to Seattle and came home with a copy of the city’s infamous altweekly The Stranger, “and I was just flipping through it. And I was like, 'Oh, this is a good place to start a band.”’ A thought that has certainly crossed the minds of Chris Cornell, Layne Staley, Mark Arm, and dozens—probably more like hundreds—of budding musicians with the glare from shitty houselights twinkling in their eyes.

Cleveland did what people do when they’re in a still relatively new town with a friend list of zero: She went to see bands, frequented bars, and presumably withstood the passive-aggressive terror that only a city where the skies are gray roughly nine months out of the year could engender. Soon she found herself inside Linda’s Tavern, the last public place Kurt Cobain was seen alive; onetime hub for Central Seattle’s hipster scene oligarchs; and now a place where normies pay $ 14 for drinks intermediate-level bartenders could make in their sleep.

LA LUZ’S DISCOGRAPHY HAS BREATHED LIFE INTO INDIE ROCK

A guy by the name of Nicolas Gonzales was playing pool. Cleveland and Gonzales eventually became the songwriting partnership behind the Curious Mystery. Their 2009 debut, Rotting Slowly, was desert blues par excellence and released with the iconic K Records shield on the back. It was also recorded at Dub Narcotic Studios, held in the same esteem to some pretty discerning music fans as an equal to Muscle Shoals or Sun Studio.

Cleveland was welcomed into Seattle’s then-thriving DIY scene. “It was just so easy to find people to collaborate with,” Cleveland says. “And so easy to play shows. I never intended to stay here very long. But it was such a supportive environment to be a musician that I ended up staying for 11 or 12 years.”

This was around the time you could live in Seattle and not make a lot of money. Cleveland booked the tours herself; the band slept on floors from sea to shining sea. One day, she found herself listening to

Sanda Pop Vol. 1, a Mississippi Records compilation of Indonesian pop music. Cleveland says about the comp, “There were a lot of just really cool-sounding guitars. 7 want to make a band like this.’”

Cleveland thought about what band she’d want to be in that didn’t already exist, coming up with the perfect concept of La Luz. The band would be one part Dick Dale on his best behavior, one part Dara Puspita, the Indonesian band once the toast of music bloggers in the Blogspot era, and one part your favorite Burger Records garage band. But, you know, the ones who weren’t pedophiles. So she left the Curious Mystery, told her bandmate, drummer Marian Li Pino, that she wanted to start a band with just women, found Alice Sandahi on keys and Abbey Blackwell playing bass through the scene, and hung out at U District venue Café Racer, a hub for the city’s jazz and improvisational music scenes.

Cleveland had written a batch of songs shortly after the tragic shooting that happened at Racer on May 30, 2012, when a man killed four people and injured a fifth. Cleveland’s friend Drew Keriakedes, who was literally “a circus clown who told dirty jokes,” was murdered at Café Racer that day. Keriakedes—one of many Café Racer regulars—had a larger-than-life personality. “I just felt like I needed to step up and give back some of what I thought was missing after he was gone,” she says. Cleveland’s friend had been open and accepting of everyone; a presence that made

everyone within range to embrace feel immediately comfortable. Through this, Drew’s killing ultimately inspired Cleveland to start her band in earnest. He was the kind of character she wanted La Luz to embody: the best hugger around who also happened to swallow swords and stick forks up their nose.

And that’s what led La Luz to record their first EP, Damp Face, in a trailer park bunker attached to the park’s laundry room. That feeling extended to their debut, It’s Alive, a delectable set that carried an underlying layer of foreboding as strongly as its songs were thrillingly and unforgettably catchy. Not to mention vocal harmonies so good, you’ll swear you can hear Phil Spector—from either jail or an inner circle of hell—approve.

In November 2014, La Luz joined the theater-kid psych-pop band Of Montreal on the road, the former’s first support tour. Of course, Of Montreal’s setup was so that they could drive through the night. La Luz did their level damnedest to keep pace.

On the drive from Boise to Seattle, an eight-hour shot, partway through mountain passes, the tour van slipped on a patch of black ice and spun out, hitting the median along a place, brushing up against the Idaho-Montana border, called Deadman Pass. The situational irony of the crash site’s location is not lost on Cleveland. La Luz’s leader was certain the band would meet their demise there, but they remained unscathed. For the moment.

“We’re just waiting for a really long time in the middle of this mountain pass,” Cleveland says. “We’re just waiting and waiting. Nobody comes. And Marian was in the driver’s seat, and I remember her saying, Here it comes.’ The next minute, a semi truck slams into the van and it pushes us for a [long] ways and veers off the side of the freeway.”

Cleveland describes the catastrophic damage narrowly missing her body. The van was destroyed beyond repair—obviously; all the band’s gear was wrecked. When officers finally showed up, the members of La Luz were taken to a retirement home to convalesce because the nearest hospital was too far away.

In light of this experience, Cleveland says, “We were like, 'Okay, well, maybe if we’re able to somehow borrow some gear...’ We’re still trying to figure out how we could do the rest of the tour.” Then the singer laughs.

“For me, it’s looking back and saying [to myself], ‘I can’t fucking believe we thought we were gonna do the rest of that tour.’”

In an email to CREEM, bassist Lena Simon writes that she had intended to hitch a ride down to Los Angeles with La Luz on that tour and, further, “I did have a premonition that something bad was going to happen to

them that night when they did that overnight drive.” She’d even warned Li Pino that she had a bad feeling and suggested they wait until morning to return to Seattle, but they were already on the road. After founding bassist Abbey Blackwell quit the band following its literal brush with death, Simon—already a close pal of the band—took her place, despite the fact that, as she says, “there was definitely PTSD that even I carry to this day driving through passes with a van full of gear. ”

Because none of the members of La Luz belonged to the secret society of indie rock musicians with rich parents, the community surrounding them stepped up to support. Hardly Art and its parent label Sub Pop set up fundraisers. Cleveland said a school-age girl in Australia held a bake sale. The outpouring of love and whatever money people could spare was enough to get the band through, even galvanizing them to the point where they were back on the road just four months later. And then...

“I had a mammogram. They told me I had cancer. It was a big surprise.”

Shana Cleveland is describing the feeling of finding out she had breast cancer, which was announced in early 2022. Tour dates canceled. Shock and sadness emanated from fans of her work all over the world. “It kind of shattered my whole existence,” she says. “I just felt like an outsider to the rest of the world. I don’t know why I didn’t just think I could get treatment and be okay. But at the time, it was like cancer, that word...it just makes you feel like, ‘Well, that’s it. See you later.’”

Not everybody beats cancer. Cleveland hadn’t known anybody who had beaten cancer when she received her diagnosis. Her son was only 2 years old, and the thought of her not being around for him demolished her. She learned the idea of being less attached to things, including the idea of being alive, from an informational booklet on Buddhism. When she came out of a successful treatment cancer-free, Cleveland continued to apply the lessons she learned to her post-treatment life.

The band suffered a long period of inactivity, which was broken up by their manager suggesting they get together to record demos. They talked about not writing too much prior to getting together, to have a looser style of collaborating on the new album than they had before. Cleveland says that just before the band reconvened, Simon decided to leave the band.

“It was just time to do something else,” Simon writes. “It wasn’t personal to anyone in particular. I felt a calling to jump into something new and explore what other doors were out there, what other worlds I could find myself in."

A big part of Simon’s departure was the desire to focus on her other band, Kairos Creature Club. Longtime keyboard player Alice Sandahi decided to part ways from La Luz as well. And although there was talk about scrapping what would become News of the Uniuerse, the band used it as an opportunity to push boundaries before Sandahi and Simon ended their time as La Luz members. Garage rock and surf music once served as a bedrock for the band’s sound; on their latest, that flavor was jettisoned in favor of spacey psychedelia, sharp grooves, and even a little Sabbath-esque heaviness.

After two writing stints at Cleveland’s Grass Valley home, they would drive down to San Francisco to the Tiny Telephone studio after each writing block and record with Maryam Qudus, also known as Spacemoth. The songs came quickly; partly due to the chemistry of the band, but also out of a selfimposed pressure to work briskly. Cleveland says, “I feel like Lena making the decision to leave was probably part of it. I’m sure it was something she had been thinking about for a while."

The intensity of having two members on the way out, along with Qudus’ production, are two meaningful components of News of the Uniuerse being the most musically ambitious La Luz full-length yet. It’s heavy on texture; colorful keyboard lines are given more space to blossom on songs like “Strange World" and “Close Your Eyes.” “I’ll Go With You" and the album’s title track are given appropriately sinister intros. “Moon in Reverse” has an astral bounce in its intro that’s begging to be sampled by a budding hip-hop producer.

“I don’t know a lot about the magic of the studio," Cleveland says about recording with Qudus. “It’s mysterious to me. But the main thing was we were just so comfortable with her immediately that it felt like she was our old friend."

With two members gone, with so many tragedies survived, questions still come up: Why keep the name La Luz if you’re the only original member left? With a hint of hard-earned confidence, Cleveland answers, “I feel like it’s always been my band. The people who are in the band now are people that were aware of the band before, and they’re drawn in because of the history of the band." She emphasizes the fact that La Luz is a concept she doesn’t see herself getting bored with, and seeing as she’s driving the direction of said concept, she’s inclined to pick up the ball wherever it lands and keep running.

Which leads to another new era for La Luz, which exemplifies, if nothing else, that life is lived in seasons. Going back to the idea of Buddhism, death and life are equal parts of a continuum. The origins of the band itself are rooted in blood. We’re all one step ahead of the undertaker until we’re not. Some artists are better than others at finding the beauty in that. ©