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Seattle’s La Luz recorded their debut EP, Damp Face, in a small trailer on a hot August day. But barring the inevitable “no-AC-in-the-van” summer tour calamity, La Luz runs cool. Their brand of coolness isn’t about distance or affect; it’s a mood, and—sue me, but I’m about to totally rip off Zelda Fitzgerald: Something about this music vibrates to the dusky, dreamy smell of dying moons and shadows.

In Spanish, La Luz means “light” and that’s the perfect thing to evoke when your songs give the illusion of veering in the opposite direction. But lift out most any lyric—which is a good excuse to give a closer listen to the delicate, four-part harmonies that are fast becoming the band’s signature—and you’ll find that the aches and pains of love and loss, of living in a world where no foothold is ever a promise—all this is delivered with a nuanced dose of perfectly timed exhilaration, like the whole thing might just be worth it in the end.

Last spring, La Luz returned to that steamy trailer park to record It’s Alive – the much-anticipated follow up to Damp Face – with their friend and engineer Johnny Goss. From the first get-psyched drum roll and eerie chords of “Sure As Spring”, the dinged-up pop gem that opens the album, the rest moves like a slow drive on a dangerous road, slinking and bending as the terrain shifts. On “What Good Am I?”, the lead vocals, and the swirl of harmonies that surround it, recall the Spartan haze of Mazzy Star’s misty-eyed super hit. Smack in the middle is the title track. “It’s Alive” is a jangly rocker with a spooky refrain, oodles of ooohs, and a marauding narrative that nails down the misty logic of the rest of the album. Two instrumentals, “Sunstroke” and “Phantom Feelings”, showcase the band’s beach jam surf chops, and fall perfectly between the chilled out heartache that surrounds them.

TRACK LISTING

1. Sure As Spring
2. All The Time
3. Morning High
4. What Good Am I?
5. Sunstroke
6. It?s Alive
7. Big Big Blood
8. Call Me In The Day
9. Pink Slime
10. Phantom Feelings
11. You Can Never Know