La Luz have a new album, out via Sub Pop Records on May 24th, 2024!, Available on CD, band exclusive “black ice” with white splatter vinyl limited to 500 copies, and “Luzer Edition” on limited orange vinyl!
All preorders include limited edition newspaper, featuring side-splitting comics, plant facts, a crossword puzzle, horoscopes, coupons, space madness, and more!, “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 long time 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.
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 colour 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?
La Luz – the band led by Shana Cleveland – has announced the May 24 release of their new album, The LP marks their first for Sub Pop. La Luz shares “Strange World,” the first single off of “News of the Universe”. “It’s been a strange and difficult few years, and at moments, I have found myself rushing to move forward in time, to leave the present and escape to whatever is next,” says Cleveland. “The best advice a friend gave me during a time when I was feeling particularly overwhelmed and battling consecutive panic attacks was to go outside, take my shoes off, and sit with my feet on the earth. This seemed to slow the universe down in a way that made it feel easier to handle. So this chorus is something of a mantra to myself ‘we’ll be fine, just take your time.’” The video was shot by Vanessa Pla and features Cleveland on a bike delivering the La Luz Observer newspaper whose headline reads “News of the Universe” .
La Luz will be touring North America, Europe, and the UK in support of “News of the Universe”, and the first run of dates will kick off May 23 in Barcelona.
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.
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 Fat Angel Sings 