What's On in Los Angeles

In a world orbited by two moons, lunar phases dance in tandem, tugging at the tides. Beneath these amulets of light lies the landscape in which SAINTSENECA’s new album Highwalllow & Supermoon Songs came to be. Bandleader Zac Little had been struggling, stalled out creatively and disconnected. Songwriting completely halted and depression took hold. Music didn’t sound good. It freaked me out. I always had used creativity as a vehicle to metabolize my emotions and experiences - process, digest, and move forward. Now it wasn’t working. This world gets heavy. Everyone falls into the pit at some point. I got crushed under the weight of something I couldn’t sing myself out of. While on a walk he found a pen tucked against the curb. It wasn’t special, yet he felt an invitation to pick it up. He took it home and set it to paper, surprised by its vibrant green offering. Don’t Know What You’re In Until You’re Out, the second full-length record from Philadelphia band Gladie, opens with a contemplative instrumental called “Purple Year.” Along with acoustic strumming and a late-night wall of cricket-chirps, cello and gentle horn runs set a dewy, moonlit stage before second track and single “Born Yesterday” bursts alive with drums, bass, and bright guitar chord crunch. It’s like a cold, heart-jolting morning plunge as Augusta Koch’s familiar Philly tenor starts in: “It takes me more time, I’m a little unsteady/I was born yesterday, I forgot I could be somebody.” Koch realized while writing these songs that she had become an entirely different person: a mental, spiritual, and physical renaissance had unfolded over several years that, together, constituted an entirely new reality. Everything had changed, from relationships with friends to relationships with alcohol. Being on the other side of these tectonic shifts offered the sort of clarity that you can only get by going through the darkness: You Don’t Know What You’re In Until You’re Out. It’s optimistic, but it’s scary, too—life changes always are. Who will you be at the end of them? “Born Yesterday,” which Koch wrote about not drinking alcohol anymore, offers a critical revelation that guides the record, and which was hard-earned while experiencing the overwhelming emotional acuity that developed while living without alcohol: “The way I feel, I could fill the ocean/When the wave comes crashing in, it said I’m not a fixed thing/I’m changeable.”