$1 per ticket sold will go to benefit NELA United for Students, which supports students experiencing homelessness and financial hardship, and CHIRLA, The Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights.

Allah-Las

“A ship in harbor is safe, but that’s not what ships are built for” the saying goes. But suppose the proverbial harbor is Los Angeles — a place not particularly known for being the origin of adventures. From the Spanish Conquistadors to the countless starry-eyed nobodies hoping to make it big, LA is usually the destination. 

So it’s no wonder the Allah Las became fascinated with both the carefree spirit and glitter-in-the-gutter lifestyle of their hometown. After three records mining its lore and lure (from the desert to the sea) they have become global ambassadors of not just a place but a location.

Having taken their compact California on the road across the world (making stops in North, Central, and South America, Europe, South Africa, Australia, Russia, East Asia and beyond), they couldn’t help but peek through the other end of the telescope.

On their fourth LP, drummer Matt Correia, bassist Spencer Dunham, and guitarists Miles Michaud and Pedrum Siadatian turn their collective gaze outward and toward the horizon. Simply titled LAHS (a reference to a common misspelling of the band’s name), their forthcoming release on Mexican Summer finds the band turning in their most cohesive and ambitious work yet.

The Allah Las seem to be transmitting from a place not found on any map. Those familiar with the band’s work will recognize their skillful melding of melodies and moods, but through that lens we see them venturing into new, exciting territories. Indeed, their growth not just as songwriters, but as performers, arrangers, and producers — is clearly audible.

Correia sings in Portuguese on “Prazer Em Te Conhecer” (Nice to Meet You), which evokes George Harrison while also sounding like a rare 45 from a Brazilian flea market. The breezy sweetness of “Pleasure” could pass for a song by Spanish folk darlings Picnic, were it not for the wistful wisdom in Dunham’s delivery. “Polar Onion” takes us through the inevitable lows one encounters on a long journey, as Michaud laments “drown in the sea, I fill my cup – but it’s not enough”– a caricature of the lonesome cowboy seeking and occasionally glimpsing enlightenment.

One of the most notable evolutions from their previous work is a razor-sharp focus on the groove. We hear the rhythms of Krautrock influencing songs like “Houston” and “Electricity,” with steady and precise drumming that create complexity from repetition. Whilst both “Roco Ono” and “Star” incorporate elements of disco and soul into Allah Las universe, highlighting an airtight rhythm section unafraid to tap their toes. 

Opener “Holding Pattern” conveys what the title suggests; you’ve almost arrived, you can see the ground, but you’re not quite there yet. Airy, ethereal harmonies chant the title, holding you in suspense- and eventually give way to an entirely different mood just before the fade- as if telling the listener “we’ve landed safely.” The persistent shuffle of “In The Air” drives the song forward, while Siadatian’s echo slapped voice bounces along on top, describing “images that can’t compare to the real thing in the air.” Electric guitar and mellotron trade licks, mirror each other’s kinetic ascending and descending lines and calling to mind the playful jubilance of Kevin Ayers in his prime.

“We’ve been traveling a lot the past couple years and I think that played a role in influencing the broader variety of songs on this record” Correia explains. And this is precisely what sets LAHS apart from its predecessors — a record inspired less by time, but by place. “LAHS to me feels like a soundtrack to the past 5 years or so. A sort of audio postcard to anyone who wants to listen.” This sentiment is echoed in the album’s artwork — a collection of exotic postcards, postmarked from equally exotic locals (designed by Matt Correia & Robbie Simon).

Tracking was done mostly by the band at their own studio in Los Angeles, allowing them more time and space to experiment with tunes and tones. Producer/Engineer Jarvis Taveniere (Woods) was brought in to help polish it off, resulting in a sound both crisp and clear while keeping with the warmth and atmosphere the band are known for.

The Allah Las have left the harbor. The infectious wanderlust that fuels these thirteen songs continues to propel the group forward across new frontiers, as they collect and catalog all they find and return with plenty of inspiration in tow. With LAHS we not only discover what souvenirs they’ve brought back for us; they’re inviting us aboard and taking us along for the ride.

La Luz

“I was in a dream, but now I can see that change is the only law.”

With a credo adapted from science fiction author Octavia E. Butler, an album title from a collection of metaphysical poetry, and an expansion in consciousness brought on by personal crisis, guitarist and songwriter Shana Cleveland learns to embrace a changing world with unconditional love on News of the Universe, the new full-length from California rock band La Luz.

News of the Universe is a record born of calamity, a work of dark, beautiful psychedelia reflecting Cleveland’s experience of having her world blown apart by a breast cancer diagnosis just two years after the birth of her son. It’s also a portrait of a band in flux, marking the first appearance for drummer Audrey Johnson and the final ones from longtime members bassist Lena Simon and keyboardist Alice Sandahl, whose contributions add a bittersweet edge to a record that is both elegy for an old world and cosmic road map to a strange new one.

But is there any band in the world more suited to capturing the chaos of change in all its messy beauty than La Luz? Formed by Cleveland in 2012, La Luz is beloved for their ability to balance bedlam and bliss, each new record another fine-tuning of the band’s mix of swaggering riffs with angelic vocals borrowed from doo-wop and folk; a band so reliably great that it makes the huge step forward in confidence and sheer musicality that is News of the Universe all the more formidable. Cleveland, also a writer and painter, has developed into a truly original songwriter with her own canon of haunted psychedelia that, in recent years, has drawn upon the changing landscape around her rural California home for inspiration, notably on last year’s critically acclaimed solo release, Manzanita, a magical realist documentation of her pregnancy and early motherhood that appeared on many year-end lists.

Yet if Cleveland has spent years writing songs about ghosts, what lurks in the shadows of News of the Universe is nothing less than death itself. “There are moments on this album that sound to me like the last frantic confession before an asteroid destroys the earth,” says Cleveland.

Sonically, the record is all urgency. Songs trip over themselves as if trying to outrun the apocalypse: the breathless pitter-pattering of toms on “Strange World,” the title track’s finger-tangling opening riff drenched in murky distortion. An atmosphere of doom hovers hazily over the Sgt. Pepper-esque baroque pop song “Poppies,” on which Cleveland sings of a wavering orange idyll about to be set ablaze by the late summer sun. On the similarly kaleidoscopic “Dandelions,” she figures the yellow flowers for unsuspecting “little suns” soon to be “turning into moons” as the season marches on. The synthesized sounds used on the band’s last record, 2021’s La Luz, to mimic the languid buzz and crackle of a summer’s day in the countryside have been cut adrift in space—now they are silvery comet tails, dapplings of space dust, showers of stars.

These earthy observations are inspired by Cleveland’s walks around her home in the shell-shocked days post-diagnosis when she found she had to be very intentional about what she consumed. “Seeing the cycle of life, seeing things grow out of decay, the decay of other living things—was super comforting to me. I had to get to a place where I felt more comfortable with the idea of death,” she says.

But for every moment of fear, there is one of pure ecstasy. Shimmery chamber pop song “Blue Moth Cloud Shadow” puddles into a twinkly organ-driven reverie; “I’ll Go With You” starts out with the record’s sludgiest riff before turning into its prettiest song. “Always in Love” is a real power-of-love ballad that serves as the record’s centerpiece and is capped off by a fiery and jubilant guitar solo, Cleveland’s own “November Rain” moment.

The powerful sense of openness that permeates News of the Universe is at least partially due to the fact that it is a record made entirely by women—from the performing, writing, and producing all the way through to the recording, engineering, and mastering. “There is something inherently and simultaneously sweet and brutal about womanhood,” says Cleveland. “That is something I hear on this record.”

Working with producer Maryam Qudos (Spacemoth), the all-female environment allowed Cleveland to feel safe tapping into difficult places and expressing hard emotions women are socialized to suppress. “Having that kind of connection and that comfort straightaway let us push it further,” she says. “We didn’t spend the first half of the session being careful not to offend someone’s ego.”

Qudos also helped shape the songs, bringing ideas to the table “that to me felt like choices that I would not normally make, but I was really stoked about,” says Cleveland, pointing out that the dubbed-out effects on “Moon in Reverse” were all Qudos. “Sometimes she would have ideas about the structure of the songs, which a producer often doesn’t really mess with. But as a songwriter herself, I think she felt really comfortable with us.” Their working relationship was so organic that Qudos has since joined La Luz full-time on keyboards to replace the departing Sandahl.

Unashamedly vulnerable, unabashedly feminine, and undeniably triumphant, News of the Universe is another knockout record from a band so reliably great that it has perhaps led people to overlook how pioneering La Luz really are: women of color in indie music forging their own path by following their own artistic star into galaxies beyond current musical trends, always led by an earnest belief in the cosmic power of love and a great riff. Never is that more true than on News of the Universe, which might be La Luz’s most brutal record to date but also their most blissful. After everything, how could it not?