Fans of Shana Cleveland's moody garage surf band La Luz might be thrown for a loop by her significantly more hushed and haunted solo work. If you listen closely to Cleveland's entire oeuvre, however, it becomes more apparent that she's been inspecting the same shadowy tones and floating feelings throughout her entire career, just at various degrees of amplitude depending on which form her music takes. Her third solo album, Manzanita, is some of her most low-key and slowly blooming material to date, fleshing out softly ...
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Fans of Shana Cleveland's moody garage surf band La Luz might be thrown for a loop by her significantly more hushed and haunted solo work. If you listen closely to Cleveland's entire oeuvre, however, it becomes more apparent that she's been inspecting the same shadowy tones and floating feelings throughout her entire career, just at various degrees of amplitude depending on which form her music takes. Her third solo album, Manzanita, is some of her most low-key and slowly blooming material to date, fleshing out softly flickering folk tunes with understated orchestral arrangements. The album's strongest track, "Faces in the Firelight," is also its best utilization of this formula, with Cleveland's ambling acoustic guitar and smoky vocals elevated by lush strings and a steady soft rock rhythm section. The sparingly placed vocal harmonies dance with a web of organic stringed instruments and synthesizer sounds, creating a mellow and dreamy bedding for the song to coast on. Much of Manzanita keeps this slow smolder going. "Mystic Mine" feels like a lost pastoral acid folk track from 1971, somewhere between Kevin Ayers' goofy balladry and Linda Perhacs' dazzled perspectives on the natural world. The instrumentation is dense but dialed back, with electric piano, pedal steel guitar, harpsichord, and growling synths all peeking through on various songs but never overtaking the mix. The songs are so subtle, in fact, that all of the sonic detailing seems to melt into itself, making it feel like Cleveland's whispering vocals and fingerpicked guitar are the only things happening on tracks like "Evil Eye" and "Quick Winter Sun," despite the full arrangements playing out in the background. Manzanita is as much an atmosphere as it is an artistic statement, casting a friendly-if-stormy spell on the listener for its 14-track duration and then fading into the mist. It's a lovely album to get lost in, offering sounds which might go unnoticed on the first few spins, but will rise up as repeat listens make Manzanita's insular and mysterious dreamworld a more familiar place. ~ Fred Thomas, Rovi
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