Kevin Bronson on May 8th, 2014

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Now that the mundane strumminess of Vivian Girls is in the rear-view mirror, Katy Goodman is focusing energy on her solo project La Sera. And she has a lot of it, judging from the new La Sera album “Hour of the Dawn” (out next week via Hardly Art and streaming in full here). The new album was recorded in the East L.A. studio of Joel Jerome, nee Morales, of Dios and Babies on Acid and now busy working with bands such as Cherry Glazerr, Tashaki Miyaki and Froth. It finds Goodman and guitarist-in-arms Tod Wisenbaker playing “faster, louder and more aggressively,” she says. Or to put it colloquially, “Kickball Katy” kicks more ass in three minutes of “Losing to the Dark” than her former band did in three albums. The DNA of artists such as the Pretenders and Liz Phair run through “Hour of the Dawn’s” prickly guitars and pricklier lyrics, and it’s welcome to hear that lineage in these heady days of humdrum garage-pop. Let it roar.

||| Stream: “Running Wild” and “Losing to the Dark”

||| Live: La Sera celebrates its album release with a show at the Echo tonight, supported by Colleen Green and Springtime Carnivore.

Photo by Jake Michaels