LA LUZ

La Luz from California have been loved by fans and press alike since their founding year in 2012, as they manage the balancing act between chaos and bittersweetness.

Each new record is another tweak to their blend of sultry riffs and angelic vocals that borrow from pop and folk; a band so reliably great that it makes the huge step forward in confidence and sheer musicianship that News of the Universe takes all the more impressive. Cleveland, who also writes and paints, has evolved into a truly original songwriter with her own canon of ghostly psychedelia, who in recent years has drawn inspiration from the changing landscape around her rural California home, most notably on the critically acclaimed solo album Manzanita, a magical realist documentation of her pregnancy and early motherhood that was on many year-end lists. Even if Cleveland has been writing songs about ghosts for years, what lurks in the shadows of "News of the Universe" is nothing less than death itself: "There are moments on this album that sound to me like the last frantic confession before an asteroid destroys the earth." In terms of sound, the record is full of urgency. The songs stumble over themselves as if they were trying to escape the apocalypse: the breathless clattering of the toms in "Strange World", the finger-snapping opening riff of the title track, drenched in distortion. An atmosphere of doom hovers over the Sgt. Pepper-esque baroque pop song "Poppies", in which Cleveland sings of a wavering orange idyll set ablaze by the late summer sun. In the similarly kaleidoscopic "Dandelions", she thinks the yellow flowers are unsuspecting "little suns" that will turn into "moons" as the season progresses.

The synthetic sounds used on the last album "La Luz" from 2021, to imitate the languid hum and crackle of a summer's day in the countryside, have been scattered into space. Gritty, vulnerable, feminine and undeniably triumphant, News of the Universe is another stunning record from a band so reliably good that people may have overlooked just how groundbreaking La Luz really are: women of color in indie music blazing their own trail, following their own artistic star into galaxies beyond current musical trends - always guided by a sincere belief in the cosmic power of love and a great riff. Never is this more true than on "News of the Universe", perhaps La Luz's most brutal album, but also their happiest.