Shana Cleveland - Manzanita (LP) - Maroon Vinyl

Shana Cleveland has always had a way of making the everyday feel a little enchanted. As the guitarist and vocalist from La Luz she’s known for surfy twang and ghostly harmonies, but her solo work moves toward something quieter and more intimate. Manzanita, released in March 2023 on Seattle label Hardly Art, is the warmest and most cohesive expression of that side of her writing. It’s the kind of record that makes you lean in. You can hear fingers on strings, breath around the mic, weather at the edges.

The songs were written during a life shift, with Cleveland describing them as growing out of pregnancy and time spent living in rural California. You can feel that focus in the pacing. Nothing hurries. The arrangements are detailed without ever feeling crowded, stitched together with fingerpicked guitar, soft percussion and the kind of subtle embellishments that reward repeat listens. A touch of pedal steel glows here and there. Strings slide in and out like an extra breeze through the room. It’s folk at heart, but with a psychedelic shimmer that recalls Vashti Bunyan and early Cate Le Bon, filtered through Cleveland’s own West Coast sensibility.

Faces in the Firelight sets the tone. It’s a love song, but not the usual kind. Cleveland sings about future visions and daily tenderness in a hush, the rhythm ticking like a bedside clock. The guitar figure loops hypnotically while gentle accents bloom around it. Quick Winter Sun is brighter, built on a nimble melody that keeps circling back on itself, like a walk that takes you past the same terracotta rooftops at different times of day. Then there’s A Ghost, which sounds eerie on paper but plays like a comforting visitation. The harmony lines feel hand sewn, and the chorus lands softly rather than spooking you. Across the record the vocals sit close to your ear, never raised, always sure.

What really sticks is Cleveland’s sense of space. She knows when to leave a line hanging and when to tuck a harmony in behind it. You hear how much she trusts the songs. The production serves that trust. Nothing calls attention to itself. The acoustics are dry enough to catch the grain of the guitar but roomy enough to let the instruments breathe. The result feels lived-in, as if you’ve wandered into a home recording session that just happened to capture a perfect take. It’s a different sort of magnetism than La Luz, yet you can trace the same melodic instincts and love of mood.

Manzanita arrived to a quiet wave of praise from places that matter. Pitchfork noted the record’s intimate focus, and The Guardian highlighted the gentle psychedelic tint that runs through it. Bandcamp Daily gave it a thoughtful profile too, homing in on how Cleveland writes to everyday love and the natural world without slipping into cliché. None of that changes how the album plays in your living room, but it does tell you something about its staying power. These are songs that hold up after the glow of a first spin.

On vinyl the record really blooms. The low-key dynamics and hushed textures work beautifully on a turntable, with the acoustic guitar sitting warm and centred and the small details rising out of the mix. If you’re browsing a Melbourne record store or trawling for vinyl records Australia wide, keep an eye out for Manzanita vinyl and other Shana Cleveland albums on vinyl. It is the sort of album that suits an unhurried evening, the needle tracing those quiet valleys while the room gets dark. If you prefer to buy Shana Cleveland records online, the Hardly Art store and plenty of indie shops have you covered, and any decent Shana Cleveland vinyl pressing will do the trick.

Manzanita does not try to reinvent anything. It aims smaller and hits more deeply. By the end you feel like you’ve been sitting with someone who knows how to dress a simple melody, how to let a feeling last, and how to write about happiness and care without turning saccharine. That is harder than it sounds. There’s a lot of noise out there. This record makes a case for attention, for a cup of tea, for looking out the window and letting a song find its level. It’s one of those rare solo turns that stands right beside the band work, not as a side note, but as another path worth following.