La Luz

Seattles La Luz recorded their debut EP, Damp Face, in a small trailer on a hot August day. But barring the inevitable no-AC-in-the-van summer tour calamity, La Luz runs cool. Their brand of coolness isnt about distance or affect; its a mood, andsue me, but Im about to totally rip off Zelda Fitzgerald: Something about this music vibrates to the dusky, dreamy smell of dying moons and shadows. So yeah, that kind of cool.

Still, La Luzs live shows, more than most these days, are about connection. Its evident that the four ridiculously talented ladies on stage are not only playing music with each other, but for each other. And they engage their audience as well. Like a proper punk bandwhich they are not they give you shit for not dancing. They convey a gritty self-possession, a sense that theyve been there and back again. And, like the expert, but seemingly effortless, surf licks and meandering bass lines that rise and fall throughout their songs, their mocking is playful and dreamy and disarming enough to get most of the crowd (and sometimes the keyboard player) dancing down the center line of a soul train.

But as any half-assed Freudian will tell you, there can be no meaningful connection without first weathering some dark and lonely times. Here comes the chilly part: What makes La Luz stand outand stand out fastthe band has only been playing together for a year and people took notice almost immediatelyis that this is a band that embodies that most elusive slant on the human condition: longing, and the fleeting relief that tags alongside deep desire.

In Spanish, La Luz means light and thats the perfect thing to evoke when your songs give the illusion of veering in the opposite direction. But lift out most any lyricwhich is a good excuse to give a closer listen to the delicate, four-part harmonies that are fast becoming the bands signatureand youll find that the aches and pains of love and loss, of living in a world where no foothold is ever a promiseall this is delivered with a nuanced dose of perfectly timed exhilaration, like the whole thing might just be worth it in the end.

Last spring, La Luz returned to that steamy trailer park to record Its Alive the much-anticipated follow up to Damp Face with their friend and engineer Johnny Goss. From the first get-psyched drum roll and eerie chords of Sure As Spring, the dinged-up pop gem that opens the album, the rest moves like a slow drive on a dangerous road, slinking and bending as the terrain shifts. On What Good Am I?, the lead vocals, and the swirl of harmonies that surround it, recall the Spartan haze of Mazzy Stars misty-eyed super hit. Smack in the middle is the title track. Its Alive is a jangly rocker with a spooky refrain, oodles of ooohs, and a marauding narrative that nails down the misty logic of the rest of the album. Two instrumentals, Sunstroke and Phantom Feelings, showcase the bands beach jam surf chops, and fall perfectly between the chilled out heartache that surrounds them.

In October, Seattles Hardly Art will release the sum of these tracks: Its Alive.