Maybe it was the pre-holidays festive spirit, or perhaps the lingering post-COVID joy of unbridled access to live music, but upon first step inside the venue, there was something in the air, something palpably laid back, that set the tone for the evening. Smiles sprinkled throughout the crowd, clinking tin cans between comrades, and not a single person shoving through the crowd for as far as the eye could see.

The opening set from La Luz – a four-piece surf-rock group from California whose name translated from Spanish means “the light” – was a psychedelic fusion for both the eyes and ears. Visually, the band embraced a dreamy aesthetic with a gigantic, googly-eyed, and potentially papier-mâché sun, along with videos of tie-dyed patterns in pleasing pastel shades. The ambience was, simply put, psychedelic, baby. 

Sonically, La Luz offered a unique, echo-drenched, female-forward sound that was both beachy and haunting. The quartet’s tight harmonies were reminiscent of a ‘60s sound, while still maintaining a modern indie energy. Tracks like “Call Me in the Day,” “California Finally,” and the moodier, “Always in Love,” suggested themes of endless summer and unrequited love; dreamy and melancholic. Throughout their set, I couldn’t help but think how well these songs would suit a Sofia Coppola-inspired scene: sun-drenched, slightly ethereal, and oh-so atmospheric. 

After a speedy set change, headliners Portugal. The Man took to the stage, presenting what seemed to align with the night’s theme: a melting, atmospheric kaleidoscope of sounds and visuals. Dramatically opening with floor-to-ceiling screens, which played throughout their entire set, the band challenged us to dig a little deeper. This included consideration of the complex relationship between humans and nature through sweeping videos of the Alaskan landscape, along with provoking voiceovers and stills. To kick things off, the band chose a clip of a lone orca, swimming listlessly in a marine park, with a voiceover that asked us to question the meaning of life itself. This quickly transitioned into beautiful, sweeping shots of wild mountains and tundra. This was a clear nod to the mighty Denali, North America’s highest peak, which also happens to be the name of Portugal. The Man’s current tour, the new album’s first track, and located in their home state of Alaska. Perfect harmony.

Given that the band’s latest album, SHISH, released in early November, also references the 49th state, this visual presentation made perfect sense. It also made the experience feel fulsome, like something that went beyond sound and was meant to be consumed via multiple senses. Sonically, SHISH is a much different album from the band’s earlier music. It feels more rock-oriented and experimental, while still managing to deliver infectious pop hooks that the band has become known for producing. Regardless of genre, the crowd ate it up as Portugal. The Man alternated between full-throttle rock, flashes of metal, and infectious pop hooks. All while in matching track suits, I should add. 

Particular set highlights included their title track, “Denali,” a song that oscillates between electro-pop and heavy riffs, and the lighter, more melancholic “Tyonek” – a song with shades of their previous albums. This fluctuation was seamlessly navigated by all eight members, who appeared to simply be having the best time; moving, grooving, and hyping each other up. Concertgoers reciprocated the grooving towards the latter half of the set, which offered up crowd pleasers including “Feel It Still” and “Live in the Moment”.

It’s also fun to note that the performance offered multiple nods to Canadiana, featuring photos of Torontonians like John Candy, Eugene Levy, and Catherine O’Hara, along with a scene of Michael J. Fox in Back to the Future. 

All in all, both bands’ performances not only demonstrated their musical versatility but a commitment to the live music experience. It was an immersive, fun evening of camaraderie that felt both sonically and visually satisfying. 

The post Portugal. The Man and La Luz take over History for a psychedelic fusion appeared first on Quip Magazine.

Chick in audience #1: “Oh my god they’re all so cute! Which one do you love?

Chick in audience #2: “Ugh, ALL of them!”

Within 30 seconds no one noticed if the band was attractive or not because the crowd was busy hopping up and down. Within three songs there was a big, sloppy mosh pit. By the sixth song, crowd surfing. The bar did a brisk business and no one in the sold-out crowd was bored or detached. Maybe that’s no big deal in some cities but Portland in January? That’s saying something.

The band sat down backstage to talk to Quip after their sound check while waiting for their dinner order to arrive. The four members of La Luz—drummer Marian Li Pino, Bassist Lena Simon, Keyboardist Alice Sandahl, and guitarist/lead vocalist Shana Cleveland—have a warm, friendly ease about one another, just like you’d guess they would. Sometimes they finish one another’s sentences. They laugh a lot. They’re cool.

Eric Evans: So are you guys on tour?

Shana Cleveland: We’re home. We’ve been in Seattle since November, I think. We’re going out again next month.

EE: For how long? 

SC: A little over a month. We’re going to record for two weeks in L.A., then tour around the south.

EE: That was my next question, if you’re working on new stuff.

SC: Yeah! we should have our album finished by the end of February, so… but then it takes forever for it to come out. [All laugh]. You won’t see it for years. [Laughter]

EE: Formats? Vinyl, digital?

SC: And cassette, CD. All that stuff.

EE: So, have any of you read the Interview Björk did with Pitchfork? She talks about being a woman in the music industry and how you have to say everything 5 tikes to be heard once, and I wondered if that was the case with you. 

Marian Li Pino: Does she mean with sound guys?

EE: I think she meant overall, like if you had an idea for a video or just getting credit for the work she does on production, for example. 

SC: Maybe it’s because she’s working on a bigger scale? I think the people we work with are good at listening, I guess. I mean, Hardly Art [the band’s label] is run by a woman so it would be, like, weird if she wasn’t listening to us because we’re women. Our booking agent’s a woman.

MLP: True. I feel like most everyone’s been pretty great, including sound guys. I don’t think we’ve really run into anyone horrible. Well, one.

EE: There’s always one. 

Alice Sandahl: Yeah… Otherwise, in terms of making creative ideas happen, it doesn’t seem like a roadblock. [Others murmur in agreement] There are other aspects of it that are definitely not cool with dudes but people that we work with directly? Pretty good.

EE: How long have you been working on writing songs for the new album? 

SC: We’ve been working on songs for a while. One of the songs that’s going to be on the next album is something that we were gonna put on the last album, but at the last minute we were like “ah, it’s not ready yet, so…” So yeah, since then for that one, the rest for the last six months or so. Just between tours, kind of getting stuff together.

EE: Do you play new stuff while you’re on tour, try things out on the road?

SC: Yeah! We’ve played about half of them live.

MLP: We learned that from the last album. After recording it and not playing them live, and then going out and touring them, having the songs change after a while, getting nuanced, getting more pieces of us into them… we really wanted to have that happen on the next album—tour with the songs before we record them, or try to do that.

EE: Do you record your shows? 

Lena Simon: No.

SC: You kind of end up seeing them and hearing them sometimes anyway, on YouTube or whatever.

EE: Do songs change as you play them live?

LS: You kind of discover whether something’s working or not.

MLP: And sometimes someone will do something funny and people will react to it, or someone will do something and the whole band will react to it.

EE: And it sticks.

SC: You kind of lock in a little bit when you play them too. They just get better, so it’s better to just work with them for a while before recording.

EE: I imagine your audiences are pretty open to hearing whatever it is you’re playing. 

LS: Seems like it.

SC: I guess so. [all laugh] I mean, they’re gonna hear it if they like it or not. [Laughter]

EE: I talked to a couple of your fans upstairs and asked them. They said “whatever they want to play is cool.”

AS: That’s nice!

LS: Actually we don’t know that, but cool. [laughter] I feel like we definitely try to play new songs, but there are a few songs that we always try to play like “Sure As Spring”, “Call Me In The Day”, “Big Big Blood”.

SC: But usually if we ask “What do you guys want to hear?” it’s like…

EE: Crickets. [All laugh]

SC: Yeah. Sometimes I hear “Easy Baby” or “Brainwash”.

LS: That’s true.

SC: But other than that, people seem like, chill. We can play whatever.

EE: You guys going back to the east coast this year?

SC: Um… I’m sure we’ll go back when the album comes out.

AS: Definitely.

SC: The last time we were there was in August. we played at the Museum of Modern Art, which was awesome.

EE: That’s a good gig. [Laughter]

SC: Yeah! We just did a few other shows on the east coast and came back. But we’ve been out there a few times. We started touring right away after we started playing as a band, so…

EE: What kind of music did you like in high school?

LS: Oh no.

AS: Oh GOD. [All hissing, laughing] It’s AWFUL.

MLP: I was all over the place.

AS: I was too.

SC: I was reaaaalllly into grunge in high school—

LS: I don’t even know.

SC: —and northwest indie rock. [Knowing glances, laughter]

LS: Yeah, me too! Like the Shins? Well, I don’t know. High school is different for me than these guys, actually. My sister gave me this, like, “indie mix part one” when she went to college and I was just starting high school and it had like The Shins, Built To Spill was on there…

MLP: Elliot Smith?

LS: A lot of Elliot Smith was on there.

MLP: Alright, so that’s you. Your high school was my college…  [turns to Alice] What did you listen to?

AS: [Pauses] … I don’t want to talk about it. [Laughter]

MLP: You have to!

AS: I loved… Dave Matthews Band.

Rest of band: NOOOOOOO! [Laughter]

AS: I told you! I told you!

SC: That’s on record.

MLP: And your reaction is on record too. And he lives in Seattle so you’d better watch your back! [laughter] [in lower voice] And you better watch your back because I hear he lives in Wallingford and goes to a bakery over there!

LS: Or QFC! [Laughter]

Someone with the band: I just saw him last week, actually.

MLP: There you go. Because you know he’s going to read this.

AS: I don’t know, real poppy stuff, like Christina Aguilera a little bit. I had a weird mix. I was also listening to Ella Fitzgerald, so I don’t know. OK, I remember a new Britney Spears album came out while I was in high school and I did buy that. [Collective laughter]

SC: You know how we should answer this question next time? Only mention obscure, like, super indie-cred stuff. We should be like, ‘I only listened to Pet Sounds, My Bloody Valentine’s first record’—

LS: —‘and this Swedish band you’ve never heard of.’ [Laughter]

MLP: For me it’s all over the place. First of all, I want a disclaimer: I guess I wasn’t really into music at the time. I was playing the drums a lot but I wasn’t listening to music, I just listened to whatever my family listened to, and one brother was like ‘you gotta listen to the Dixie Chicks’ so I started listening to the Dixie Chicks. And he listened to a lot of bluegrass so that’s where I learned to harmonize, so I will thank him for that. The other brother, though? He got me into Red Hot Chili Peppers which is what taught me how to do funk drumming. And thennnn… but then it gets worse. Like N*SYNC, Janet Jackson…

LS: In high school?

MLP: In high school. The really bad ones, though? I don’t know if anyone even remembers these bands. Yellowcard?

AS: Didn’t they have an electric violin player in there?

MLP: How did you know that?

AS: Middle school.

MLP: I think that’s enough.

AS: That’s quite enough.

MLP: Weirdly enough I didn’t get into music until I was in college. I was playing music but I didn’t get into it until then. [band turns to Shana, who has yet to share]

SC: I think I already said. I was really into Nirvana and other grunge stuff…

EE: Well that’s not embarrassing at all 

SC: Hmmm… I was going to say something but then I realized it would be mean to call that embarrassing. Ah geez, I don’t know.

AS: Maybe you blocked it out.

SC: I remember my first year of high school I was really into Silverchair. I was really into that hit song of theirs, you know: [in low grunge voice] “You gotta wait till tomorrow…” [Laughter]

MLP: Nice Eddie Vedder voice! [Laughter]

SC: I was on this field trip that my mom made me go on, it was for black students at high school. I was in AP class and it was like all the black kids go on this sailing trip together—a really weird idea. And I was like, “I don’t wanna go on this class trip,” you know, it was the week before my first year of high school and I didn’t know anybody. And my mom was like, if I go she’ll buy me this Smashing Pumpkins VHS tape I really wanted. So I was like “OK.” [laughter] So I’m in this van with all the black kids from my new high school and that song came on the radio and everyone was talking shit about it. And it was my favorite song at the time! And they were like “What is this shit?” That was embarrassing. [Rest of band awwws] But they were right. That song sucked. [Laughter]

EE: Any goals for the year?

MLP: I want to go to Australia. That’s my 2015. By the end of the year, at least have plans. It would be nice to make a little more money. Maybe the new album could make a little more money… I don’t have control over any of this though. [Laughter] I want things to happen for me but I don’t want to do anything about it.

AS: Touring new places is a good goal.

LS: I love that.

SC: Yeah, I don’t know. I’m just excited for the album to come out. It almost seems weird to make goals because you can’t really control anything in this business.

MLP: Maybe more like wishes. [Laughter]

LS: [Nerd voice] I wanna get to 20,000 Facebook Likes. [Laughter]

AS: My goal is to get more productive between tours.

MLP: Yeah! I want to hop on to that one too. Someone needs to write a how-to on that.

EE: So are all of you full-time musicians?

All: Yeah.

EE: That’s great, usually the bands I talk to, nine out of 10 have regular day jobs, like bartender, barista… 

SC: That’s a really surprising percentage actually. Like, I’d think it would be lower.

MLP: Like one out of 25.

SC: Yeah… you have to make a lot of sacrifices.

MLP: You have to just commit to being homeless, I think. Yeah.

AS: That’s our goal!

SC: Committing to being homeless? Oh, admitting to being homeless, I thought you said ‘committing’.

MLP: I said committing.

AS: We have admitted, we have not committed. [All laugh]

The post Admitting & committing: an interview with La Luz appeared first on Quip Magazine.