“You Disappear” by La Luz

This morning, Seattle’s “surf noir” four-piece La Luz premiered their latest music video, “You Disappear”. While conceived as a loving homage to slapped-together public access variety programs, the video also incorporates some far-out 3-D visuals that anyone at home with a pair of 3-D glasses (which were complementary in every copy of the band’s new record Weirdo Shrine) can enjoy. Tomorrow, the band inaugurates an ambitious 32-date European tour with a set at the Incubate Festival in Tilburg.

A full list of overseas tour dates is at the bottom of the page.

About the record:

Having survived a high-speed highway collision shortly after releasing their 2013 debut LP It’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 music’s ability to whip eager crowds into a frenzy. In response, frontwoman Shana Cleveland’s guitar solos took on a more unhinged quality. The basslines (from newly-installed member Lena Simon) became more lithe and elastic.

When it came time to record Weirdo Shrine, their second album—due out August 7th—the goal was to capture the band’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. Cleveland’s newly fuzzed-up guitar solos—which now incorporated the influence of Japanese Eleki players in addition to the twang of American surf and country—were juxtaposed against the group’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 “You Disappear” and “Oranges,” and sought inspiration from Charles Burns’ Seattle-set graphic novel Black Hole.

The resulting album is a natural evolution of the band’s self-styled “surf noir” sound—a rawer, turbo-charged sequel that charts themes of loneliness, infatuation, obsession and death across eleven tracks, from the opening credits siren song of “Sleep Till They Die” to the widescreen, receding-skyline send-off of “Oranges” and its bittersweet epilogue, “True Love Knows.”

In describing Weirdo Shrine, Segall remarked that it gave him a vision of a “world…burning with colors [he’d] never seen, like mauve that is living.” In “Oranges,” the Brautigan poem which inspired the aforementioned track of the same name, the poet writes of a surreal “orange wind / that glows from your footsteps.” 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.

Tour Dates:
09.18.15 – Tilburg, NL – Incubate Fesival
09.19.15 – Leffinge, BE – Leffingeleuren Festival
09.20.15 – Haldern, DE – Haldern Pop Bar
09.21.15 – Hamburg, DE – Aalhaus
09.22.15 – Lund, SE – Mejeriet
09.23.15 – Stockholm, SE – Geronimos FGT
09.24.15 – Oslo, NO – Cafe Mono
09.25.15 – Copenhagen, DK – Stengade
09.26.15 – Berlin, DE – Berlin Independent Night
09.28.15 – Prague, CZ – Klub 007
09.29.15 – Vienna, AT – Rhiz
09.30.15 – Schorndorf, DE – Manufaktur ~
10.01.15 – Freiburg, DE – Slow Club
10.02.15 – Brescia, IT – Lio Bar
10.03.15 – Bologna, IT – Covo Club
10.05.15 – St. Gallen, CH – Millionaires Club
10.06.15 – Zürich, CH – Bogen F >
10.07.15 – Lyon, FR – Marché Gare @
10.08.15 – Montpellier, FR – Les Internationales de la Guitares
10.09.15 – Barcelona, ES – La [2] De Nitsa
10.10.15 – Madrid, ES – Villamanuela Festival
10.11.15 – Lisbon, PT – Casa Independente
10.13.15 – Bilbao, ES – Kafe Antzokia
10.14.15 – Bordeaux, FR – Iboat
10.15.15 – Paris, FR – Batofar
10.16.15 – Brighton, UK – Bleach
10.17.15 – Manchester, UK – The Eagle Inn
10.19.15 – Glasgow, UK – The Hug & Pint
10.20.15 – Leeds, UK – Brudenell Social Club
10.21.15 – Cardiff, UK – Moon Club
10.22.15 – London, UK – Hoxton Square Bar & Kitchen
10.23.15 – Brussels, BE – Madame Moustache
10.24.15 – Amsterdam, NL – Paradiso