Weirdo Shrine

Weirdo Shrine

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 Itâ€™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 musicâ€™s ability to whip eager crowds into a frenzy. In response, frontwoman Shana Clevelandâ€™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 albumâ€”due out August 7thâ€”the goal was to capture the bandâ€™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. 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. Clevelandâ€™s newly fuzzed-up guitar solosâ€”which now incorporated the influence of Japanese Eleki players in addition to the twang of American surf and countryâ€”were juxtaposed against the groupâ€™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. Thematically, Cleveland channeled Washingtonian poet Richard Brautigan on â€œYou Disappearâ€ and â€œOranges,â€ and sought inspiration from Charles Burnsâ€™ Seattle-set graphic novel Black Hole. The resulting album is a natural evolution of the bandâ€™s self-styled â€œsurf noirâ€ soundâ€”a rawer, turbo-charged sequel that charts themes of loneliness, infatuation, obsession and death across eleven tracks, from the opening credits siren song of â€œSleep Till They Dieâ€ to the widescreen, receding-skyline send-off of â€œOrangesâ€ and its bittersweet epilogue, â€œTrue Love Knows.â€ In describing Weirdo Shrine, Segall remarked that it gave him a vision of a â€œworldâ€¦burning with colors [heâ€™d] never seen, like mauve that is living.â€ In â€œOranges,â€ the Brautigan poem which inspired the aforementioned track of the same name, the poet writes of a surreal â€œorange wind / that glows from your footsteps.â€ 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.
Country USA
Brand HARDLY ART
Manufacturer Hardly Art
Binding Audio CD
ItemPartNumber HAR089CD
Model HAR089CD
ReleaseDate 2015-08-07
UnitCount 1
UPCs 098787308921
EANs 0098787308921

Country	USA
Brand	HARDLY ART
Manufacturer	Hardly Art
Binding	Audio CD
ItemPartNumber	HAR089CD
Model	HAR089CD
ReleaseDate	2015-08-07
UnitCount	1
UPCs	098787308921
EANs	0098787308921

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