The Luyas exist in a world all their own. Their music is a kaleidoscope. It refracts a stylized and beautifully rendered version of reality back to us, surrounded by a bohemian orchestral frame. I could spend hours absorbed by their impressionistic songwriting and still come away with a different view of their work from the last time I listened.
That continual shift in composition and sound, like the movement in Van Gogh’s Starry Night, is why it’s so hard to nail down the essence of a Luyas song in one sitting. Take “All Of Everything” as an example. After listening to it on repeat recently, I started to hear how the song breathes. Like a long draw on one of those e-cigarettes, the Luyas inhale deeply and hold. Then slowly a controlled exhale fills the room with the song’s pillowy essence.
As Jessie Stein describes in its opening lines, “All of Everything” releases its identity “…into the arms of all of everything”, simultaneously sounding like everything and nothing you’ve ever heard before. Sometimes a song is just a song. Sometimes, and often time in the Luyas’ case, a song manages to capture all of everything.
