Today songwriter, musician, visual artist, and writer Shana Cleveland (La Luz) has released the dreamy “Walking Through The Morning Dew,” the newest single off her forthcoming solo album, Manzanita which is out March 10 via Hardly Art Records. The LP is set in the natural world and Cleveland’s move to rural California allowed for most of the songwriting to take place outside. Shana says, “This is a song about Spring and rebirth. In California, Spring is the season when nature comes inside. The house is suddenly full of weird bugs. A line from this song encapsulates the album - ‘Everything is blindingly in bloom.’” Listen/share “Walking Through Morning Dew” here and watch the video here:
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Pre-orders for Manzanita are now available from Hardly Art. LP pre-orders through Hardly Art and select independent retailers in North America, in the U.K, and in Europe will receive the limited Maroon (colored) vinyl.
On March 10th, Shana Cleveland will celebrate the release with a performance at Oakland’s Bandcamp HQ, supported by Spacemoth. Tickets here. Additionally, she’ll embark on a Spring tour supporting Shannon & The Clams, all dates below.
TOUR DATES
03/10 Oakland, CA @ Bandcamp
05/11 Fresno, CA @ Fulton 55*
05/12 Santa Barbara, CA @ SOhO*
05/13 Pioneertown, CA @ Pappy & Harriet's*
05/15 Los Angeles, CA @ Lodge Room*
05/16 San Luis Obispo, CA @ SLO Brew*
05/17 Petaluma, CA @ The Phoenix Theater*
05/18 Big Sur, CA @ Henry Miller Memorial Library*
*w/ Shannon & The Clams
Shana announced Manzanita with the orchestral pop single “Faces in the Firelight” which Brooklyn Vegan called "gorgeous, pastoral” and followed that with last month’s “A Ghost” a lush, Mellotron-backed, angelic dirge. The singles have seen support from the likes of Pitchfork, Stereogum, American Songwriter, With Guitars, and more.
Manzanita, like her 2019 solo LP Night of the Worm Moon, is set back and away from the genre-recombinant garage pop of her band La Luz. On it she continues to play guitar and vocals; Johnny Goss, who has recorded all of Shana’s solo material and early La Luz recordings, and Abbey Blackwell (Alvvays, La Luz) play the bass; Olie Eshleman is on pedal steel; and her life partner Will Sprott (Shannon and the Clams) plays the keyboards, dulcimer, glockenspiel, harpsichord, and synthesizers.
The natural world greatly informs Manzanita, in part because that’s her workplace. Shana now lives in rural California and says “part of moving here for me was living somewhere where writing outside was possible all year.” The record was also recorded around the time of having her first child, an experience which made her realize that she is not separate from nature, that none of us are. “This is a supernatural love album set in the California wilderness,” Cleveland explains.
Manzanita’s songs tell the stories of moving to the country, starting a family, laughing for real at the same joke the thirteenth time you’ve heard it, and surviving heavy shit (this is the first release since Cleveland’s successful treatment for a diagnosis of breast cancer at the start of 2022). The lyrics are satisfyingly direct, with the buoyantly whimsical descriptions typical of the 1960s New York School of poetry. It’s peppered with the kind of unexpected turns that make the words more modern, and in their spookiness they are more West Coast. These are domestic scenes, and bliss abounds, but it’s more about the utter weirdness of being a creature than anything else.
Manzanita is subtle, powerful, and unafraid; Shana Cleveland’s strongest and most personal album to date.
hardly art la luz manzanita shana cleveland walking through the morning dew