New Music You Shouldn’t Miss  – The Stranger

Lucha Luna
Brilla Brilla
(Self-Released)

One of Seattle’s most interesting new groups, Lucha Luna consists of vocalist Eva Vazquez and percussionist/synth manipulator Thomas Arndt. You may know Arndt as percussionist for exceptional eclecticists Day Soul Exquisite and Vazquez for her time in Toxic Tears and Savi. On their debut album, Brilla Brilla, they team up for a tantalizing fusion of reggaeton, punk, cumbia, and EDM.

In a 2024 Slog post on Day Soul Exquisite, Arndt revealed their immersion in Brazilian music, and the intro to opening track “Ritmo Eternal” appears to contain an arresting riff on berimbau, a single-stringed Afro-Brazilian instrument that produces a wonderfully warped twang. Eventually, a beautifully eerie keyboard melody sparkles over a menacing yet celebratory rhythm and synth bass, as Vazquez sings in Spanish with steely resolve. Throughout these seven songs, she’s a commanding presence on the mic, ranging from punkish agitation to heart-fluttering featheriness. “Manzana Prohibida” is as exhilaratingly tense as PiL circa Metal Box, as Vazquez sings with a gripping urgency. On “Camino por la Noche,” unusual, metallic percussion timbres and ill Roland 303 blurges cohere into a vibrantly dirge-y cumbia white-knuckler. With its superb dynamics and arrangements, interesting array of instruments, and extranjero percussive timbres, “Camino por la Noche” exemplifies Lucha Luna’s specialness.

A lot of Latin-diaspora music sounds cloyingly cheerful (I know, it’s a me problem), but Lucha Luna add a welcome degree of edginess and distortion to these styles. They excel at threading post-punk darkness with Latin American rhythmic sabor. There just isn’t much in Seattle that sounds like Lucha Luna. ¡Respeto!

Black Viiolet
Dark Blue
(Adrenalin Fix)

Nicole Laurenne plays organ and sings with the Darts, a femme-powered Seattle quartet who kick garage rock into vibrant new life with fishnet-stocking-clad legs, as evidenced by their new album, Halloween Love Songs. But moonlighting as Black Viiolet, the multi-instrumentalist/songwriter goes off on a radical tangent into torch-song trip-hop.

Like an American Amy Whitehouse fronting a jazz-loving Morcheeba, Black Viiolet traipses into familiar territory, but she imbues Dark Blue’s songs with alluring mystique and lyrics informed by the ache of being away from your new lover while you’re doing something you love, i.e., touring. Laurenne wrote these 13 tracks in the Darts’ van while on the road, and you can feel the longing in them. Absence makes the words burn brighter.

Laurenne’s nuanced singing—which would make the late David Lynch stub out his cigarette with gusto and pay close attention—dominates, but her deft keyboard playing and beatmaking elevate the music to the top 10 percent of this overcrowded field. Drummer Gregg Ziemba, double bassist Evan Strauss, trombonist Basile Conand, trumpeter Jean-Gatien Pasquier, and saxophonist Paul Cadier fill out the noir-ish portraits with restrained, impressionist daubs and a soupçon of funk. The result makes any listener feel way more sophisticated and rich than they have a right to. Even Dwarves’ notorious hell-raiser Blag Dahlia appears on vocals and arrangement on a remix of the elegantly lubricious “One” and can’t break the enchanting spell.

Seattle-area musicians can send music to NewSeattleMusic@TheStranger.com for possible coverage.

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