Shana Cleveland - Night of the Worm Moon

Way back in the early Eighties kids, there was a musical scene in California that came to be called The Paisley Underground. It was full of people who harked back to the Sixties as their spiritual home, grew their hair long as a mission statement, played guitars, wore suede jackets and made music that really had very little to do with either the Punk or New Wave that had gone just before.

The bands they looked back to were The Byrds, Buffalo Springfield, The Velvet Underground, Love, The Doors, The Beau Brummels, and, (a sole concession that something interesting might have been happening across the Atlantic at the same time), the early Pink Floyd. These young bands, The Rain Parade, The Dream Syndicate, The Bangles, (before they became the Bangles), Three O'Clock, the Long Ryders, Green on Red and True West didn't make an enormous amount of commercial headway, at least at this point, and the scene was gone within a couple of years as inevitably happens to most scenes. Before they went their separate ways though some of them got together and made an album of covers of their inspirations called Rainy Day which you really should hear.

But they did leave a lasting impression, at least towards the margins. On Creation Records in the UK for starters and Alan McGee, who was a big Rain Parade fan, in particular. One member of the original line up of that band, David Roback, departed early and formed Opel with Kendra Smith of the Dream Syndicate. They made some wonderful records together then went their separate ways too at which point Roback formed Mazzy Star with singer Hope Sandoval and they proceeded to establish a considerable cult and critical legacy for themselves which lasts to the present day.

Which brings me finally to Night of the Worm Moon, the debut album from Shana Cleveland, lead singer of La Luz. La Luz are another California band and this fact is absolutely key to an appreciation of the record. It's very, very Californian in the best possible way. But a very specific tradition, the one I've talked about in the previous paragraphs, and one that goes back even further than that to the Beats City Light Bookstore.

Night of the Worm Moon is a record of dewy eyed cosmic and psychedelic wonder and remarkable tonal consistency that is already one of my favourite albums of the year after a couple of plays on the morning it's released. It's the sound of strummed acoustic guitars and Cleveland's wan, evocative awestruck vocals, songs sung around a desert campfire gazing at the moon and the stars and the aliens beyond.

The album isn't entirely a bolt from the blue. There are a whole raft of bands making music a bit like this at the moment. La Luz of course, but also Allah Las, Mystic Braves, Cool Ghouls, even at a push Warpaint. But there's something remarkably sustained and powerful about this.

I'm incredibly excited about Night of the Worm Moon and exactly how accomplished it is. I'm going to go out today and try to track down a vinyl copy to play to a friend who's coming to stay for the weekend. He's someone who I've known since the mid-Eighties, loves this stuff as much as me and I suspect will appreciate it as much as I do. Truly. A gem!