Graham Reid | | 1 min read
Good Luck with Your Secret
One of the Elsewhere Best of the Year albums of 2023 was the intimate folk album Manzanita by Shana Cleveland, a founder and sole original member in the US surf rock band La Luz.
The journey and offshoots of that Seattle band were worth following as they moved from twanging surf guitar and girl group rock'n'roll roots on their 2013 debut It's Alive through line-up changes and to more mainstream post-punk pop and dreamy ballads.
Those shifts and broadening of their style have been prompted by the parallel solo career of Cleveland, a poet and visual artist whose Manzanita album we noted was “a beguiling marriage of timeless, elegant folk and wispily delivered insight”.
Motherhood, treatment for breast cancer and moving to the country had changed her, and some of Manzanita's gentle influence is apparent on this fifth studio album News of the Universe which explores acceptance on the Beatlesque Poppies: “I thought I'd disappear under the weight of troubles . . . and now across the field the poppies come again”.
Here too are simple sentiments delivered without irony (Always in Love, the deliberately naive I'll Go With You) alongside the fuzz-box guitar and relentless groove of Strange World, wired up dream pop of Dandelions, the glistening instrumental Close Your Eyes and the organ-psychedelics of Good Luck With Your Secret (very 1968).
Some of these 12 tracks seem slight but, like the Courtneys and shamelessly enjoyable Aquadolls, La Luz tap just enough retro-rock and folk-pop over the duration that their unassuming personality – Cleveland's in fact – comes through.
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You can hear and buy this album at bandcamp here.
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