La Sera – Hour Of The Dawn

Rating:

It’s been a while since Katy Goodman stepped away from Vivian Girls and out on her own with La Sera. Her last full-length effort, See The Light, came out roughly two years ago and showed a lot of growth for the band and their sound. Now they’re back with album number three, which seems like an overall step in the edgier direction; the jangly pop is now straight rock and roll, harkening back to the original direction that La Sera began with.

“Losing To The Dark,” is the cold open for the album, with squalling feedback entering your ears first and foremost. This changes to some guttural sounding guitar and rapid percussion that gives the song a constant driving beat. Then Katy joins in with her sultry du-wop esque vocals and tops the song off. This track is a nice little introduction whose lingering guitars drive you to charge ahead into the album.What seems to be pretty commonplace now for Goodman and company is crafting catchy songs that adhere to the lo-fi and feminine vocal rock. “Fall in Place” is no exception to this, and the percussion on this song will have you tapping along to the beat and rocking out to the surfy guitars making their way through the percussion.

While song length isn’t necessarily an indication of merit, when you listen to the album, you can definitely get a taste of the different texture that the transitioning lengths of songs gives to the album. Whereas some albums of this genre come across as a little sloppy in that most of the songs are of equal length and get a little lost in the shuffle, La Sera have obviously put a little extra in time and effort into the timing of the album.

At the end of the album you feel fairly satisfied with the level of rock intricate guitar patterns that pervade most songs. While I have found some new catchy tunes to have a place in my listening rotation, it’s easy to get a little weighted down by them at instances in the album. The vocals and the guitars blend together in these instances to become a little too angular. However, this doesn’t completely weigh down Hour Of The Dawn, which has some great tracks to stumble upon.