"exuberant and open-hearted"
The group, Shasta, has a high indie pedigree. You have Micayla Grace (Albert Hammond Jr, Bleached), Jennifer Duardo, Jon Sortland (The Shins) and featuring Cecilia Della Perruti (Gothic Tropic, Beck) all together painting pictures in their own way on Roaming Hearts. The track, with the sort of disco-fied synth lines and easy beat has a lot of flavors like walking through a hallway with different mirrors changing the back gaze. The song moves from dance track (think a kind of surf punk Heart of Glass) to a kind of desert rock or beach goth vibe with shout-a-bout vox to something like Beach House through a J.Pop anime filter coalesced together and it all works.
-Robb Donker Curtius
THE FACTS AS WE KNOW THEM - PRESS NOTES:
Shasta has an all-star lineup with Micayla Grace (Albert Hammond Jr, Bleached), Jennifer Duardo, Jon Sortland (The Shins) and featuring Cecilia Della Perruti (Gothic Tropic, Beck) coming together to bring us out of the winter months and dancing into the Spring.
Dreamlike harmonies and intensely personal lyrics tell tales of love and heartache, hope and longing. Shasta evokes the mellow, carefree vibe of the West Coast but with a darkness that cuts the light.
Micayla and Jennifer began writing songs together in San Francisco. They met for the first time at night, in a dark alley in the Mission district and knew instantly they had found something special. Kindred spirits had been united, both creative and bold.
Micayla, who usually has a bass in her hands, picked up a Telecaster electric guitar for Shasta songwriting sessions. She eschewed traditional electric guitar playing styles and trusted her bass player intuition instead. The results are captivating and this experimental approach laid the foundation for how Shasta writes music. Simple, pure, and unexpected.
Jen’s incredibly catchy synth hooks shine in these songs as well. You can feel her exuberant and open-hearted approach to songwriting and melody in each part she crafts.
The vocals stand out as mesmerizing and uplifting with Micayla’s seductive vocals blending with Jen’s harmonies creating a beautiful, ethereal quality.
Jon dropped into this union bringing his bombastic energy on a live drum kit along with retro beat machines and modern triggers while playing synths simultaneously on his left. The live drumming mixed with retro beat machines collide with the warm analog synthesizers and smash beautifully together.
With perfect pop tunes being crafted, the urge to break the mold persisted in Micayla’s vision of the band – which was ultimately realized by the snake like 6-string manipulations of the incredible Cecelia Della Peruti. Cecelia’s jagged, sultry riffs hoisted the rhythmic machine of Shasta into an even more unpredictable landscape adding to a unique sound that defies genre but blends elements of synth pop, electro, rock and 80s new wave.
Shasta is of another time, space, and dimension, yet their feeling is timeless. Shasta gives you the sensation of dreaming, yet being fully alive. In the end, Shasta just wants you to dance.
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