Moving beyond surf and garage, Seattle’s La Luz shines brightly

La Luz is a Seattle-based quartet of four female musicians. The group combines surf, garage and other rocking styles, suffusing its arrangements with heavenly vocal harmonies that recall the best of early ’60s “girl groups.” The band comes to The Grey Eagle on Saturday, April 19, at 8 p.m.

Songwriter and lead guitarist Shana Cleveland was born some two decades after much of the music that inspired her. As a child, she frequented Portland, Ore., record store Mississippi Records. The shop is renowned for its eclectic offerings and runs its own label.

“They put out a lot of vinyl records, reissues, compilations and mixtapes,” she says.

One of those cassettes was a collection of Indonesian music from the late 1960s and early ’70s. “The vocal harmonies were so ethereal and dramatic,” Cleveland says. “And those beautiful harmonies were combined with twanging guitar.”

While it’s difficult to pinpoint definitively the kind of music that inspired those Southeast Asian sounds, Cleveland suggests that some of it may have been “a response to American garage rock.” This unusual combination of American garage rock with Indonesian sensibility sparked a deep fascination in Cleveland. “I was really excited about it and wanted to get that feeling in my own music,” she says.

International success

Early La Luz releases built upon Cleveland’s original vision, which also drew inspiration from sounds closer to home, such as surf/instrumental heroes The Ventures and Link Wray.

Cleveland says in the early 2010s, she was endeavoring to teach herself a specific type of guitar playing, one exemplified by those ’60s artists. “The guitar lines [on their records] were so clear and easy to distinguish,” she explains, “so I felt that was the easiest way to learn that style. A lot of our early sounds came out of those riffs.”

The band’s 2013 debut album, It’s Alive, scored positive notices for its modern take on classic sounds. Two years later, the lo-fi 2015 album Weirdo Shrine, produced by latter-day garage legend Ty Segall, received similar praise. Meanwhile, the band’s 2018 Floating Features continued La Luz’s practice of working with hip producers — The Black Keys’ Dan Auerbach this time — and found the group extending beyond its original trademark mix of gossamer vocals and garage-band instrumentation.

While the first two albums didn’t sell in quantities commensurate with their critical success, Floating Features soared up the charts … in the United Kingdom. Cleveland says that La Luz’s success in the U.K. — significantly outpacing the band’s chart action stateside — mystifies her. “My theory is that in the U.K., there’s a big appreciation for the period of music that’s so inspiring to me,” she says. “Maybe it’s because The Beatles are from there. Who knows?”

All you need is Love

Cleveland’s crate-digging bona fides shine through when she reveals another influence on La Luz’s music: Love.

The ’60s L.A.-based group led by mercurial singer, songwriter and guitarist Arthur Lee made one of that era’s great lost classics, 1967’s Forever Changes. But Cleveland cites another, lesser-known Love LP as her favorite: 1969’s harder-edged Four Sail. “That album was probably the biggest musical influence on me for News of the Universe,” Cleveland says.

Released in May 2024, La Luz’s latest full-length continues the group’s creative progression, building on what the musicians have done before but always moving outward in multiple directions.

Over the years, La Luz’s lineup has undergone many changes as well. The band is currently on its second drummer, Audrey Johnson, and third bassist, Lee Johnson. Meanwhile, its third keyboardist, Maryam Qudus, joined the band after producing News of the Universe. 

La Luz’s music is unique in that it exudes power and subtlety at the same time. That duality is on display on the new album’s “Always in Love,” in which Cleveland’s lead guitar break is placed quietly low in the mix. That production choice — with the solo sounding like a blasting guitar break played in a room down the hall — all but beckons the listener to lean in to appreciate it.

“I felt like it was giving ‘loud solo energy,’” Cleveland explains, “so I didn’t want to overdo it.”

The ethereal, wordless vocalizations of The Beach Boys’ 20/20 track “Our Prayer” were a direct influence upon “Reaching Up to the Sun,” the album’s sublime opening cut.

As she has done with all of the music written for La Luz, Cleveland took that inspiration, filtered it through her own creative sensibility and came forth with something new and original in the process. “For us humans, there’s something deeply satisfying about vocal harmonies,” she says. “When I heard ‘Our Prayer,’ I thought, ‘I want this.’”

And she got it.

WHO: La Luz with Color Green
WHERE: The Grey Eagle Music Hall, 185 Clingman Ave., avl.mx/epg
WHEN: Saturday, Apr. 19, 8 p.m. $25.86