Shana Cleveland has been beguiling listeners foryears in her role as the superlative frontwoman for elastic surf rockers . Now Cleveland is evolving her sound on the new solo full-length Night of the Worm Moon, a serene albumthat flows like a warm current while simultaneously wresting open a portal toanother dimension.
As much a work of California sci-fi as OctaviaButler’s Parable novels, Night of the Worm Moon incorporateseverything from alternate realities to divine celestial bodies. Inspired inpart by one of her musical idols, the Afro-futurist visionary Sun Ra (thealbum’s title is a tip of the hat to his 1970 release Night of the Purple Moon), the record blends pastoral folk withcosmic concerns.
Cleveland dreamt up this premise while living inLos Angeles, a city where--as deftly explored on La Luz’s recent Floating Features--reality and fantasycasually co-exist. One particularly evocative scene laid the groundwork for Night of the Worm Moon’s psychedelicundercurrents. As Cleveland tells it, “Shortlyafter I moved to Los Angeles I went to a hip hotel to watch a poolsidescreening of a documentary about a local alien-worshiping cult. Out frontcelebrities were getting out of the backs of cars and rushing past autographhounds into some roped-off room where a secret dinner was about to commence. Inthe lobby a woman was being paid to exist inside a glass box. [Then] a cardressed as a spaceship pulled up in front to release 30 white doves into the skyabove Sunset Boulevard.”
Appropriately enough, Night of the Worm Moon was recordedduring a rare cosmic occurrence: 2017’s solar eclipse. “We took a break from recording during [the] totalityand looked at the sun's image through a piece of cardboard projecting onto agarbage can,” Cleveland says. “When we came back inside the studio was coveredin dozens of tiny crescent suns, refracted from a mirrored disco ball that[engineer Johnny Goss] had hanging in a window.” Abetting Cleveland during therecording process was a familiar gallery of co-conspirators:multi-instrumentalist Will Sprott of , original La Luzbassist Abbey Blackwell, Goss, pedal steel player Olie Eshelman, and KristianGarrard, who drummed on Cleveland’s previous solo effort (with then-backingband The Sandcastles), 2011’s Oh Man,Cover the Ground.
But whereas that album was internal and contemplative, Night of the Worm Moon occupies adifferent, vibrant kind of headspace. UFO sightings, insect carcasses, andtwilight dimensions are all grist for Cleveland’s restless creativity, and theyand other inspirations collide beautifully on the album’s 10 kaleidoscopictracks--a spacebound transmission from America’s weirdo frontier.
