Shana Falana Thursday
Psych rock, shoegaze and dream pop are just a few of the descriptors tagged to the music of Shana Falana, and more might apply as this New York-based siren and soundscapist contemplates her next album – an EP that she hasn’t yet made but which is beginning to take shape in her head and in preliminary bouts of songwriting.
Falana tells PureHoney she foresees “a darker, trancier sort of tribal sound, because that’s what I really want to hear.” She finds herself circling back to the recordings of Dead Can Dance, with their haunting amalgam of ambient, goth and modern classical.
In the same spirit, Falana mentions her previous, long-ago stint in a Bulgarian women’s choir performing music comprised of words and language but which was often emphatically tonal – or “nonlyrical,” as Falana puts it – in its use of the human voice.
The exploration of timbre has always figured, one way or another, into the sprawling catalogue of music that Falana has been recording on her own since the ‘90s, whether sparse, layered, concisely cryptic or probing and experimental. It’s in this decade that Falana has methodically condensed her work into album-length releases, the latest being 2016’s bracing – and very lyrical – “Here Comes The Wave.”
It’s also the time frame in which Falana honed the immersive coordination of music and visual projection that is her in-concert signature. Live, Falana sings and plays guitar, accompanied by her boyfriend Mike Amari on drums, plus a wreath of audio loops. Between songs, she says, “I don’t really talk on stage because it really gives people a chance to get lost in the vibe without breaking the spell.”
A veteran of music scenes in San Francisco and New York, Falana has since escaped the city for the comparative quiet of Kingston, N.Y. a river valley town near forever-famous Woodstock that is evolving its own musical identity. The producer of “Here Comes The Wave,” Dan Goodwin, lives nearby. Falana, who paints houses as a sideline, says not entirely in jest that she might barter Goodwin some work on his place in exchange for studio time.
Shana Falana performs with Lindsey Mills and Turtle Grenade November 9 at Voltaire in West Palm Beach – Sean Piccoli
