Currently comprised of founding members Shana Cleveland and Marian Li Pino, who were both members of band The Curious Mystery, Alice Sandahl and the band’s newest member Lena Simon, the Los Angeles, CA-based indie rock quartet La Luz can trace their origins back to 2012 when its founding trio, along with original bassist Abbey Blackwell formed the band when they were all located in Seattle, WA. Inspired by Link Wray, The Ventures, Dick Dale and The Shirelles, the quartet released their debut EP, 2012’s Damp Face, which caught the attention of Hardly Art Records, who released the band’s critically applauded debut It’s Alive and their sophomore effort Weirdo Shrine, which helped to establish the band’s reputation for crafting a surf noir sound with layered vocal harmonies — but with the Ty Segall-produced Weirdo Shrine, the band went for a more visceral and organic sound with the heavy use of fuzz pedal.
At the end of 2015, the members of La Luz announced that they were relocating to Los Angeles, and the band’s forthcoming third, full-length album Floating Features is heavily indebted to that move as the material thematically focuses on the city’s reputation for being a “dream factory” — a sort of mecca where dreamers converge to pursue their long-held aspirations and a city full of bizarre, hallucinogenic contradictions: gorgeous settings covered with thick, choking smog; new age spiritualists mingling with deep-pocketed narcissists, palm teams and billboards and the like. And as a result, Floating Features draws from physical and psychological landscapes — while being their most thematically and sonically ambitious albums to date; in fact, the album finds the band moving away from the gritty DIY, garage rock sound of their previous two albums for a lush, shimmering Phil Spector-like sound as you’ll hear on the gorgeous, bewitching and somnambulant album single “Cicada.”
Directed by Ryan D. Browne, the recently released video for “Cicada” is a pitch-perfect send up of soap operas and novellas, including tarot card readers, evil twins, comatose protagonists and more.
