Q&A | Allah Las

Allah Las’ new album LAS sounds like someone dug it up, forgotten and sun bleached, from a Brazilian flea market. Each song is an excavation, brushing the dust off and discovering another hidden gem. The Allah Las (Miles Michaud, Matthew Correia, Pedrum Siadatian, Spencer Dunham) have never been easy to cage inside the box of Genre: Garage Rock, Beach Punk, 60’s Retro, Vintage-Indie, Pop-Rock. They’ve worn every tongue twisting title possible, but none ever seem to fit. Always a wistful lyric or nostalgic chord is left out of place. 

Their new album LAS, released October 11th, is the hardest yet to tack words to. We are tugged into a kaleidoscope of moods: placid like a frozen lake, ankle-deep in love, tangled in a Brian Wilson daze, subtly paranoid, morning dew groggy, sun-chapped and meditative. You’ll never catch Miles Michaud slip, always level headed and keeping his cool. He never reaches above indoor-library voice. It levitates through the album, swapping tongues with Portuguese and Japanese. Each guitar solo washes over us like a warm bath, leaving us breathless and hypnotized. Perhaps an ode to Los Angeles in mid August, when the ceiling fan breaks, and the only place you can breathe is at the beach.

LAS is Allah-Las’ fourth and most seasoned album. Since their last album Calico Review in 2016, the band has developed a record label Calico Discos. Look out for the debut release Payador by Tim Hill later this year. 

I chatted with bassist, Spencer Dunham, about the maturing sound of LAS and his opinions on genre. In conclusion, Dunham decided that if Allah Las was a strain of weed, it would be called Jah-La Lahs. With that— sit back, smoke some Jah-La-Lah, and enjoy the Q&A!

Your last album was released in 2016. What has Allah Las been up to in the past three years? 

We’ve been keeping busy with shows and were lucky enough to play in Bali & Japan as well as some shows in the states, but mostly we’ve been at home writing, recording and relaxing.  We also developed a record label called Calico Discos and will be putting out the debut release later this year from our friend and keyboard player Tim Hill titled Payador.

I must say, when I listened to LAHS was shocked by its lack of garage/beach rock elements. I had expected a little more “Polar Onion” but instead found swarms of different genres, languages, and cultural allusions. LAHS still contains the effortless and dazed heart your music continually preserves, but the pulse has matured. What caused this stylistic sophistication and transformation? Where did the creative direction of knitting Portuguese/Brazilian elements to your sound? 

After the onslaught of questions about being a “60s” band when our first record came out, we felt inclined to write songs that couldn’t be put in that box.  Translating songs and singing them in a foreign language seemed like a fun experiment and we thought that it might be nice for fans in foreign countries to be able to listen to a song of ours from within the context of their own language. 

What is the biggest creative risk you took with this album? 

With our previous records we went into proper studios but with this record we decided to build our own studio in our practice space and record it ourselves - once we realized that doing it completely by ourselves was going to yield less than ideal results, we enlisted the help of our talented friend Jarvis Taveniere.  

In your song “In the Air” what is this real thing in the air that is too dark for us to see? 

The more time you spend looking at a screen the more detached your reality becomes 

“Royal Blues” contains excerpts of Japanese spoken word, and the transition is so seamless that without close attention, one might not notice the difference. What urged you to swap tongues throughout the song? 

The chant that happens throughout the song inspired incorporating Japanese spoken word into the song. The source is a book of Japanese death poetry. The English in the chorus was the natural way to go about it, written rather quickly

Does LAHS embrace an overall thesis? Is there a common thread you worked through out that concerns the album? 

Nope.  It’s more of a collection than a themed narrative. 

Some call your music “dream-pop” or “psychedelic” or “garage” “vintage-indie” and so on. What is your perspective on genre? Does it hold importance in your music? For me, it sounds as though you are constantly trying to escape it.

As long as long as it’s not meant as an insult, people can call it whatever the hell they want.   

I, and other music critics, have always sensed an occasional melancholy and loneliness that sleep walks through your music. Is this a conscious decision? Or is it an accidental effect of the sound you aim to produce? Or perhaps I am just melancholy and lonely person. 

Our music often has a moody quality to it. It’s not necessarily intentional but we do enjoy that kind of music and aren’t trying to make happy go lucky pop music.  

Take this as you will, but overall your music is ideal to smoke weed to. Do any members of the band smoke? If this album was a strain of weed, what would it be called?

Occasionally some in the band partake in the sacred herb.  If the album was a strain it might be called “Jah-La Lahs” (also the name of a jam that we recorded which ended up on the editing room floor).

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Order the album here and find their tour dates below:

TOUR DATES

November 4th - Valley Bar, Phoenix, AZ

November 5th - Meow Wolf, Sante Fe, NM

November 7th - White Oak Music Hall, Houston, TX

November 8th - Trees, Dallas, TX

November 9th - Empire Control Room, Austin, TX

November 10th - One Eyed Jacks, New Orleans, LA

November 12th - The Basement East, Nashville, TN

November 13th - Terminal West, Atlanta, GA

November 14th - Grey Eagle Tavern, Asheville, NC

November 15th - Cat’s Cradle, Carrboro, NC

November 16th - The Black Cat, Washington, DC

November 18th - Union Transfer, Philadelphia, PA

November 19th - Paradise Rock Club, Boston, MA

November 20th - Brooklyn Steel, Brooklyn, NY

November 22nd - Corona Theatre, Montreal, CA

November 24th - Lee’s Palace, Toronto, CA

November 25th - Beachland Ballroom, Cleveland, OH

November 26th - Ace of Cups, Columbus, OH

November 27th - Thalia Hall, Chicago, IL

November 29th - Fine Line Music Cafe, Minneapolis, MN

November 30th - Blueberry Hill, St. Louis, MO

December 2nd - Slowdown, Omaha, NE

December 3rd - Gothic Theatre, Englewood, CA

December 4th - Metro Music Hall, Salt Lake City, UT

December 6th - Neumos, Seattle, WA

December 7th - Wonder Ballroom, Portland, OR

December 8th - Commodore Ballroom, Vancouver, BC

December 10th - The Fillmore, San Francisco, CA

December 11th - The Observatory, Santa Ana, CA

December 12th - The Mayan, Los Angeles, CA

December 13th - The Observatory North Park, San Diego, CA

December 14th - Pappy & Harriets, Pioneertown, CA

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