La Sera’s new album Music For Listening to Music To. is a bit of a departure of her 2014 Hour of the Dawn. Katy Goodman isn’t alone. La Sera is a duo now, with guitarist/cowriter/new husband – Todd Wisenbaker. And Ryan Adams joins to produce the fruit of their union, La Sera’s first live-recorded analog album, featuring 10 tunes about good love, bad love, dead men, and confused kids.

Music For Listening to Music To opens on “High Notes.” if you ask her what her favorite parts of the new album are, she’ll tell you it’s the scrappy stuff. “Time to Go,” which hurdles out the gate on a rocket of slide guitar and elastic bass, is another one aimed at settling old accounts – just ’cause our heroine is happily married doesn’t mean she can’t take swings at those who came before.

For a glimpse at the album’s genesis, though, pull up duet “One True Love.” When it came time to write her fourth full-length, Goodman wasn’t sure where she wanted to take the music. One night she and Wisenbaker (a Jenny and Johnny touring alum who joined La Sera in 2012 and produced Hour of the Dawn) did something they’d shockingly never done before: wrote a song together. That upbeat jangle-pop cut was the result, and the rest poured out. Wisenbaker sings on two others as well – the coiffed malt shop blues of “I Need an Angel” and bittersweet rocker “Nineties,” which features synth by Adams and Greta Morgan (The Hush Sound, Gold Motel). Nate Lotz (Halsey, Madi Diaz) drummed for the weeklong PAX-AM studio sessions.

As a testament to the chemistry that happened in that space, Music For Listening to Music To spawned another fruitful relationship: Adams and Wisenbaker hit it off and decided to start their own band. Instead they wound up recording a bunch of Taylor Swift covers, which became the 1989 album. These days Wisenbaker’s doing double duty – you might’ve seen him backing Adams on Jimmy Kimmel or The Daily Show. She says Adams’ excitement about taking La Sera into the analog realm inspired her to embrace the back-to-basics approach.

La Sera
Music For Listening To Music To
(Polyvinyl)
March 4, 2016

Track list:
1. High Notes
2. A Thousand Ways
3. One True Love
4. Begins To Rain
5. Take My Heart
6. I Need An Angel
7. Time To Go
8. Shadow of Your Love
9. Nineties
10. Too Little Too Late

TOUR DATES:

02/22 – Los Angeles, CA – The Echo *
02/24 – San Francisco, CA – Noise Pop / Rickshaw Stop
03/12 – Los Angeles, CA – Echoplex / Force Field’s 10th Birthday Bash #
05/06 – Chicago, IL – Empty Bottle
05/07 – Detroit, MI – Marble Bar
05/08 – Toronto, ON – CMW
05/09 – Montreal, QC – Casa del Popolo
05/10 – Boston, MA – Great Scott
05/11 – New York, NY – Market Hotel

* = w/ Diiv
# = w/ Lightning Bolt, Wax Idols, Sonny & The Sunsets & more!