📆 Thursday, January 18th
📍 Neumos: 925 E Pike St, Seattle
🎟 $18+
Listening to an Y La Bamba song is like being swept up by a river of fuzzy guitar tones and tender vocals. It’s comforting and challenging all at once.
The brainchild of singer-songwriter and guitarist Luz Elena Mendoza Ramos, the Portland-based band blends psychedelia, pop, Latin rhythms, and folk into an alluring body of work that makes me want to dance as much as it makes me want to call my mom. Pulling from their perspective as a first-generation Mexican-American, Mendoza Ramos sings in both English and Spanish, often with the lilt of a lullaby ruminating on love, family, queerness, and the state of the world.
Their latest album, Lucha, is named both for Mendoza Ramos’s nickname and the Spanish word for “fight.” Conceived during the early days of the pandemic when isolation and the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests shaped daily life, the record documents the turbulence of the past several years on personal and societal levels. In “Dibujos De Mi Alma,” Mendoza Ramos sings about a love that cannot last anymore. “Se ven como se van,” they croon over a groovy bassline and warbly guitar.
On the album’s samba-inflected song “Hues,” indie folk icon Devendra hops on the track, weaving in and out of Mendoza Ramos to create a deceptively sweet song. The album closer “Walk Along” is the first song Mendoza Ramos has written about/for a woman, and it’s a meditative track on falling in love and coming out.
On January 18th, Y La Bamba brings this brand of dreamy folk pop to the Neumos stage with support from Seattle-based surf rockers Nada Rose.
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