La Luz Floating Features & Shows # 731 & 732

Since 2015’s Weirdo Shrine, La Luz has relocated to Los Angeles. The changing of their backdrop from Seattle to Los Angeles is embedded into their third full-length and latest album’s very core. Floating Features still levitates with the same surf noir dynamics that were first cast on 2013’s It’s Alive. Produced by Dan Auerbach of The Black Keys, Floating Features adds a new shine to La Luz’s already established sound without being too obvious. The mood on Floating Features simmers as this all female quartet draws on the theme of dreams and its many variations.

“Floating Features” starts off the album of the same name with an instrumental track. This track begins with spiraling guitar lines, and drum, organ and bass stabs before launching the listener into an exotic, 60s reverb driven landscape. “Cicada” follows next with its rhythmic organ parts and garage/surf structures as vocalist and guitarist Shana Cleveland sings lyrics such as “In air so hot and sweet/We heard it in the breeze/Metallic shimmering/Of invisible things”. These words combined with La Luz’s layered breezy harmonies, creates an atmosphere, one that is filled with mystery and a desire for meaning. “Loose Teeth” attacks next with heavy waves of reverb as the band sails through the verses, while the lyrics describe a complex dream that is coupled with confusion and ambivalence. “Mean Dream” brings in 60s psychedelia influences as acoustic guitar mixes with the band’s laid back sounds that move back and forth in a dreamlike state. “California Finally” builds with tension as drummer Marian Li Pino digs deep into the songs soggy groove while bassist Lena Simon floats somewhere between the disorienting delightful keyboard parts by Alice Sandahl and the unflinching guitar/vocals from Shana Cleveland. Lyrically the song is weighed down by words inspired by La Luz’s journey out to California. This song sets the perfect songscape and is one of the strongest moments found on Floating Features.

“The Creature” slows the pace down a bit with nightmarish lyrics like “A creature stepped out of the wall and then/In the blackness it amassed above my head” and “Couldn't move enough to reach and find a light/Tell my heart that it was only in my mind”. This song reflects an uncertainty that can follow you around, not unlike a creature in the darkness. Musically, it is mellow and tense with an unnerving energy that is also strangely comforting. “My Golden One” digs deeper into a mellow groove with a bassline that will put you into a trance-like state with sparse instrumentation and lush surrounding harmonies. “Greed Machine” is the longest track on Floating Features clocking in at four minutes and twenty seconds. The sounds that make up this song could be what was described as a “Leone-on-LSD vibe” on La Luz’s website. Lyrically, this song questions several things such as the dilemma of being in a band and the conflicts and contradictions that can surround it. “Walking Into The Sun” was inspired by a dream that Cleveland had, one that was very vivid. This describes this song perfectly, with its smoggy 60s psychedelic/surf influenced textures that also have a 50s ballad/doo-wop inspired mood and lyrics that carry a weight with a touch of heartbreak.

“Don’t Leave Me On The Earth” is layered in metaphors and surf fuelled drums, guitar, bass and organ that swelter with fervor. With a title that sounds like something from a sci-fi film from decades long ago and words such as “Wild World/I Was high/I was all dead inside” and a chorus of “Juniper/Juniper/Don’t leave me on the earth” and “Take me with you when you go”, this song and the juniper plant reference could be representing the desire for a cleansing of old landscapes as a new dream breaks free from the confines of an old one. With Floating Features, La Luz creates a mood that is a bit hazy at times and sometimes abstract. Lyrically building on the theme of dreams and the different ways that they can be perceived, La Luz confronts whatever comes their way to readjust their sonic features and to create and strengthen their own musical landscape.

Show 732 Play List (Originally Aired On July 28th, 2018)(La Luz Floating Features, Ty Segall & White Fence, Rolling Blackouts C.F.):

1. The Epsilons - I Hate (Your Face)
2. The Routes - Peeling Face
3. King Creep - Creep Enough
4. Meat Puppets - Hot Pink
5. Baby Cages - Flowers
6. Rolling Blackouts C.F. - The Hammer
7. Running From Daylight - Elvis Ain't Dead Yet
8. Bo Diddley - Doing The Crawdaddy
9. Frankie & Jimmie - Spread The News Around
10. Wicked Weather - Bad Bad Heart
11. Cowboy Junkies - Missing Children
12. The Who - Please, Please, Please
13. La Luz - Greed Machine
14. La Luz - Walking Into The Sun
15. What Seas What Shores - Texas
16. Miles Davis - Frelon Brun
17. The Lounge Lizards - Fatty Walks
18. The Birthday Party - Cry
19. Ty Segall & White Fence - Good Boy
20. Shotgun Jimmie - Triple Letter Score
21. Gang of Four - It's Her Factory
22. Little Girls - Delaware
23. Not Of - Fix Don't Fix
24. Queens of the Stone Age - Monsters in the Parasol
25. Metz - Mule
26. Nirvana - Hairspray Queen
27. Talking Heads - Artists Only

To download this weeks program, visit CJAM's schedule page for Revolution Rock and download the file for July 28.

Show 731 Play List (Originally Aired On July 21st, 2018)(Mudhoney, Deja Voodoo, Lonely Parade):

1. Mudhoney - Paranoid Core
2. The Fall-Outs - The Jealous Kind
3. The Cheetahs - Circle Two
4. Dunes - Freezer Burn
5. Lesbo Vrouven - MMMMM
6. Dumb - Ripesnakes
7. Bob Dylan - Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat
8. Chad VanGaalen - See-Thru-Skin
9. John Coltrane - Nature Boy
10. Bonny Doon - Try To Be Me
11. Father John Misty - Mr. Tillman
12. Courtney Barnett - City Looks Pretty
13. The Gruesomes - What's Your Problem
14. Zamboni Drivers - Skatin' Ghost
15. Deja Voodoo - Big Pile Of Mud
16. Deja Voodoo - Call Link Wray
17. Ray Condo & The Hard Rock Goners - High Voltage
18. Andy Pratt - Get Close To Me
19. The Fall - Couldn't Get Ahead
20. Lonely Parade - Chicken Wing
21. Lonely Parade - Johnny Utah
22. Prime Junk - Glacial
23. Stacey Green Jumps - In Other Words
24. Sonic Youth - I Dreamed I Dream
25. U.S. Girls - Sed Knife
26. Slim Twig - The Golden Rule
27. Kim Gray - Throwing Rocks
28. The Only Ones - Out There In The Night
29. The Saints - Lost and Found


To download this weeks program, visit CJAM's schedule page for Revolution Rock and download the file for July 21.