La Sera - Hour Of The Dawn (Hardly Art )
“I WANTED the new La Sera record to sound like Lesley Gore fronting Black Flag. I didn’t want it to be another record of me sad, alone in my room.”
So says Katy Goodman, vocalist/guitarist/songwriter who is La Sera. Musically, opening track ‘Losing To The Dark’ bursts forth at a furious pace, all frantic punk rhythms, Stooges-esque lead guitars, and melodic vocals. Lyrically though Katie is hardly in a good mood: “What a pain it must be to have only be with me...every moment in our lives is like a knife into my heart.”
However this album is about moving from darkness into light and on her third album Goodman sounds at her most confident, while the music is muscular - thanks to new guitarist Todd Wisenbacker - without ever losing the melodicness or indie sensibility that made Sees The Light such a charm.
The sublime ‘Fall In Place’ is indie-rock par excellence, from its arrpeggiated inrto to its big chorus. It would, in an ideal world, be a massive hit single; ‘Control’ is Bryan Adams’ ‘Run To You’ reimagined as indie-rock; ‘All My Love Is For You’ mixes a sees Goodman’s vocal melody vie tastefully with Wisenbacker’s imaginative chordal work; and ‘10 Headed Goat Wizard’, despite a title that demands a Roger Dean illustration, is another slice of melodic indie perfection.
Clocking in at a tidy 30 minutes there is hardly a note out of place, and by the end Goodman can afford to sing: “I couldn’t have found you if I wasn’t looking...rain don’t fall much ‘round this way.”
