La Luz, Floating Features

[Hardly Art]
Grade: B+

California sounds good on surf-rock quartet La Luz, which moved from Olympia, Washington to Los Angeles in the three years between its second album, Weirdo Shrine, and its third, Floating Features. A subtle blend of retro musical styles throughout allows singer-guitarist Shana Cleveland and the rest of the band to explore the textures of their sound, with shades of velvety psychedelia, noirish surf guitar, shimmery dream pop, and fidgety girl-group angst. The lyrics, dominated by B-movie monsters and altered states of consciousness, give a darker edge to the music, like a fitful dream after falling asleep in a sunny meadow, while the slick production evokes the thatched straw walls and multicolored blowfish lamps of a tropical tiki bar. In fact, La Luz’s sound is a lot like a mai tai: Both sweet and strong, it goes down easy before knocking you flat.

RIYL: Dum Dum Girls. L.A. Witch. Shannon And The Clams. Quentin Tarantino soundtracks.

Start here: The heat exhaustion really starts to set in on “California Finally,” a song that wanders through a desert of woozy, keyboard-driven psychedelia and lo-fi fuzz in search of the cool, refreshing surf-rock reverb in Cleveland’s guitar solos. [Katie Rife]

Mark Kozelek, Mark Kozelek

[Caldo Verde]
Grade: B-

It’s hard to describe what Mark Kozelek does these days as “songwriting.” It’s more like a form of podcasting, as he gathers a few times a year with friends—sometimes in his main band, Sun Kil Moon—and rambles about his daily life, punctuated by shout-outs to his sponsors, ESPN Classic and Panera Bread. Kozelek’s new self-titled solo album is more “fans only” than usual, with its minimal instrumental backing and repetitious observations about touring, aging, kitty cats, eating at restaurants, and how much he loves his girlfriend. The biggest musical development is that Kozelek is playing more with loops now and sometimes turning his own muttering voice into a background tone. Newcomers are unlikely to care much, but anyone who’s been following the man’s career since the Red House Painters should appreciate how he keeps looking for new ways to convert his very existence into art.

RIYL: Patti Smith. Leo Kottke. Marc Maron.

Start here: “The Mark Kozelek Museum” has everything a Kozelek song needs: a random memory of an old lover, a report on an Ariel Pink concert, concern about the state of the indie rock business, and disgust at the stench of European festival porta-potties (set to a loop of the word “diarrhea”). [Noel Murray]

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