NEW ALBUMS
LA LUZ
La Luz HARDLY ART 8/10
Surf guitar meets kaleidoscopic psych on a career-best LP.
By Tom Pinnock
La Luz: (l-r) Alice Sandahl, Shana Cleveland and Lena Simon
POONEH GHANA, ELEANOR PETRY
SOME artists don’t need producers – picky auteurs, say, or those who pride themselves on undiluted communication, warts and all. For everyone else though, a producer remains a crucial part of musical creation, one that can make the difference between a good and a great record.
La Luz, formed in Seattle a decade ago but based in California since 2017, have made especially strong choices with their studio collaborators. For their second album, 2015’s Weirdo Shrine, they enlisted Ty Segall to energise their grimy garage-surf; he set up a makeshift studio in a friend’s surfboard workshop to bring echoey lo-fi gallops like “You Disappear” and “Black Hole, Weirdo Shrine” to life. Dan Auerbach came on board for 2018’s Floating Features, and made their beats tighter and crisper, their organs fuzzier and their music more three-dimensional.