Back in 2012, La Luz burst onto Seattle’s indie music scene with a quasi-nostalgic sound that teeters between garage rock and surf rock, complete with sun-kissed harmonies and that unmistakable surf guitar twang.
Fast-forward 12 years to last year’s News of the Universe – a record of complementing contrasts, cocooned in an aura of eeriness, dark psychedelic goodness, tenderness, and a newfound confidence that comes with traversing the fine line between navigating the indie label sphere of the industry while still maintaining a core DIY ethos.
That…along with some pretty big, life-defining changes, particularly those of the band's founder, guitarist, and main vocalist, Shana Cleveland.
Just two years after the birth of her son, Cleveland was diagnosed with breast cancer – and her world turned upside down. Her recovery – and what can only be described as an expansion of consciousness that comes from such an experience – is etched into the very fabric of the album.
“I think that almost every little blues album has come after some sort of big monumental tragedy or just change,” Cleveland ponders. “For me, I guess that's just the nature of life. But with this one in particular, because it was written so close to going through cancer and the hardest time of my life, I can really hear the intensity of that time."
“Part of the reason I'm so proud of this record is that I listen to it and I feel like I can hear the openness and the vulnerability, but I can also hear the power of facing something really difficult and breaking through it and coming out the other side with a determination to share my love with humanity.”
First things first, what were some of your earliest musical influences? What attracted you to the guitar?
I grew up listening to a lot of Beatles – my parents were big Beatles fans. I knew the words to so many Beatles songs when I was a kid – but I really got into the idea of playing guitar when I got into grunge music. So I was just listening to Nirvana, Hole and Soundgarden and all those bands where the guitar is so important.
Was grunge part of the reason you moved to Seattle?
I had the legend of grunge music in my head, but also a lot of small indie labels, even smaller than Sub Pop, like Kill Rock Stars and K Records [are based there].
I just knew it was a place where there was a lot of indie music industry. And I was like, ‘That seems like a good place to start a band.’ It was kind of a simplistic thing in my head at the time, like, ‘I gotta go to this place with all these labels.’ But it was really helpful to be in a place with such an established indie music industry.
How did La Luz come about?
I was in another band before La Luz. I was playing with that band and touring around America a lot, and sort of not really getting anywhere.
And I was like, ‘I think I want to start something different.’ I just started thinking about what elements I would really like to see in a band that I hadn't seen. I wanted to do something with a lot of vocal harmonies. I've always loved guitar solos – so I was like, ‘I want to play guitar solos all the time.’ And not just guitar – I wanted everybody to take solos. I was really into the idea of women taking solos.
I was also like, ‘I want to play with women,’ because at the time I had been playing and touring with men, mostly. And I think when you're trapped in a small van for long periods, you just start to get annoyed with people, so I was like, ‘How can I come up with the perfect conditions for being in these really uncomfortable positions?’
I asked the drummer in my first band, Marian [Li Pino, now La Luz’s former drummer] if she would play drums in this new band that I wanted to start. And then we found other people in Seattle.
I've always loved guitar solos – so I was like, ‘I want to play guitar solos all the time.’ And not just guitar – I wanted everybody to take solos. I was really into the idea of women taking solos
You previously mentioned that Takeshi Terauchi is your guitar hero. How did you discover his work?
I know that I bought his record at Mississippi Records in Portland, which is one of my favorite record stores in the world. And his record, Nippon Guitars, just blew me away. I feel like I hadn't heard guitar playing like that before. He's kind of a surf, early rock ‘n’ roll player but there's just this twist to it. And I think part of that is just coming from Japan and he fuses sort of more traditional Japanese melodies with surf guitar.
La Luz has often been described as surf noir. Do you still associate with that term?
Not so much. I think we've moved beyond something that could be classified as surf music very gracefully.
Some parts of the new record remind me of what I loved about grunge music back in the day. But I don't think I would call it a grunge record. I don't think I would call it a surf record.
I feel like we're just doing something that, to me, feels unique. I don't think that there's another band that I would say like, ‘Oh yeah, we're doing this thing that's kind of like this other band.’ I think we've kind of forged our own path at this point.
How are songwriting and playing guitar for La Luz different from your solo projects, such as 2023’s Manzanita?
The big difference is starting on acoustic guitar versus electric. Almost always with La Luz, I'll get the initial ideas on electric and with my solo record, I'm always playing acoustic, and I do more with open tunings.
I've really been focusing on taking some guitar out. In the past, the writing process was very straightforward – I’d write a song on guitar and pretty much get it to a point where it sounded like a finished song, and then bring it to the band. And everybody would write their own parts.
With this record, I tried to get more skeletal ideas so there would be more [room] for the songs to change when we got together as a group. I was able to not be as precious about the guitar…and I'm mostly playing lead guitar on this record.
I also wanted to leave more space for other things to come through, and, as a result, I think the guitar ends up sounding more dynamic because you're not hearing it constantly.
Speaking of the new album, it's obviously very personal to you, coming right after your cancer journey and various lineup changes…
It's exciting to me to see how this album turned out because it came out of such a difficult time. I feel like it's strengthened my resolve to go out and play live and make records because I've really felt the power of channeling what I've been through through music.
Sounds a bit cheesy, but I feel like you get this renewed empathy when you go through something really difficult. It gives me a feeling of wanting to go out there and share this experience in the hope that it might resonate with other people who are struggling.
I've tried using other guitars and always come back to the Strat
You're most often seen using Fender Strats. Are you still using Strats on this record or have you experimented with different brands and models?
I'm still using Strats. I've tried using other guitars and always come back to the Strat. I am using a new Strat though. For this record, I realized the guitar sound is different. I’m doing more lead and less rhythm so I got a Fender Strat with the HSS [pickup configuration]. I like it because I can turn that on and off, and between the neck and the bridge pickups, I can get all of the sounds that I want from the Strat.
I'm so picky, especially since I'm the only guitar player in this band, I need to be able to switch back and forth between lead and rhythm.
So what pedals did you use?
I fell in love with the Hoof pedal from EarthQuaker. I had been using the Fuzz War by Death by Audio that I got when we recorded a record with Ty Segall – he's the one who first introduced me to fuzz.
In the beginning, I didn’t want any pedals. And then I was like, ‘Okay, maybe one.’ And I've been fighting every step of the way to keep my ’board minimal because I don't want to have to think too much about pedals. I just want to be in the moment.
But in the studio, I just decided to try some other fuzz because I knew I wanted a lot of fuzz on the lead guitar on this record. And so when I tried the Hoof, I was just like, ‘Oh my god, this is the fuzz that I've been looking for.’
I really liked combining that with the wah pedal, which is another pedal I've never really used before. But we had gone on tour in Australia a couple of years back, and we were playing shows with this band called ORB and they were using wah on everything, and something about this trio was really heavy. So I resolved to try it one day. And then this ended up being the album where I was like, ‘Fuzz and wah all the time.’
You also incorporated a traditional Thai instrument in this record. How did that come about?
Lena [Simon, former bassist] just went on vacation in Thailand and she bought the phin [a lute-style instrument with a pear-shaped body originating in Thailand] to our writing session. And she was just like, ‘We should do something with this.’ And we ended up working on this riff for the song that became Moon in Reverse.
My partner took a video of us playing the song. We were like, ‘We're not going to do anything with this. But do you want to hear it?’ We're playing it for him, and then he was like, ‘That was great, you should definitely record that.’
But we were so mentally fried by that point in the session that we were just totally loose. And to me, that was a big takeaway from the whole session – to allow myself to get that loose. Because a lot of the best moments on the album came out of things that I had not planned in advance.
What would you say have been some of the key highlights of your career so far?
Releasing the first La Luz record, and going on tour for that record was just huge – totally changed my life. It created a path that I could take to make music for a living, which was unfeasible before this.
And honestly, this record feels like a huge moment for me – certainly, with all the shifts in the band and the lineup, but also just the record itself, I feel so proud of it. So to me, I'm so excited to make another record because I feel really energized by the process of making this one.
Make the music you wish you could hear but you haven't heard yet
Finally, if you had to give one piece of advice to someone in a band or who just started a band, what would it be?
Make the music you wish you could hear but you haven't heard yet. You’re always going to ‘copy’ other people in different ways – you're always going to hear a guitar tone that you love and try to figure out how you can get that. But I do feel like there's so much power in looking at what's missing and trying to do that.
Part of that is not thinking about your audience when you're writing – it's so important to not have anybody else in your head except for your vision of what you want to see in the world that doesn't already exist.
- La Luz's News of the Universe is out now via Sub Pop – and the band is embarking on a U.S. tour starting in April.
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