Kevin Bronson on January 12th, 2023

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Shana Cleveland describes her forthcoming full-length “Manzanita” as “a supernatural love album set in the California wilderness.” And there’s certainly the glow of something in the chamber-pop mysticism of “Faces in the Firelight,” the album’s introductory single.

It turns out that something — and the spark for the song — is quite earthly: the impending birth of her son.

Cleveland, a founding member of the indie band La Luz, penned the song to her son (while he was in utero) and her life partner Will Sprott (of Shannon and the Clams). “The song is about watching Will tend to a huge burn pile that was still going long after dark and realizing that out there in the dark field he looked like the ultrasound image we had on our fridge,” Cleveland says. “I was thinking that the greatest act of love might be to wait for someone. To say, ‘I’ll be here whenever you’re done, whenever you’re ready.’”

“Manzanita,” Cleveland’s third solo album, will be out March 10 via Hardly Art. It’s her first since 2019 and first since being treated for breast cancer in early 2022.

Two Seraphim directs the whimsical video for “Faces in the Firelight.” Says Cleveland: “We created a fantasy realm in my backyard to visualize the sweet strangeness of the time and place when I wrote these songs: pregnant and often alone in the wilderness.”

||| Watch: The video for “Faces in the Firelight”