Sleepwalkin

"Sleepwalkin" earns its title — the song moves through its verses with a hazy, dissociated quality, the guitar lines floating in reverb like sound heard through walls. La Luz build their sonic world out of surf and early psychedelia here, but the effect isn't nostalgic so much as genuinely dreamlike, suggesting the experience of moving through a familiar place that has become somehow unrecognizable. Cleveland's guitar playing in songs like this demonstrates her gift for sustain and negative space — she's as interested in what the note does after it's played as in the attack, and that approach gives "Sleepwalkin" its particular suspension. The harmonies appear almost automatically, as if the voices are breathing rather than performing, and they reinforce the sense of something half-conscious, automatic. The rhythm section is steady but slightly back-lit, there to hold the song's shape without pressing forward. The emotional territory is the fuzzy edge between sleep and waking, or between knowing something and not yet having language for it — the kind of interior state that can only be described obliquely. You'd reach for this song at 2 a.m. after a long night that you can't quite account for.