This is a 21+ event w/ valid ID at Soda Bar - San Diego. Saintseneca –– In a world orbited by two moons, lunar phases dance in tandem, tugging at the tides. Beneath these amulets of light lies the landscape in which SAINTSENECA’s new album Highwalllow & Supermoon Songs came to be. Bandleader Zac Little had been struggling, stalled out creatively and disconnected. Songwriting completely halted and depression took hold. “Art is like my bicycle powered lightbulb - always pedaling away, pushing back the grey gloom. Sometimes the chain breaks. Music didn’t sound good. It freaked me out. I always had used creativity as a vehicle to metabolize my emotions and experiences - process, digest, and move forward. Now it wasn’t working. This world gets heavy. Everyone falls into the pit at some point. I got crushed under the weight of something I couldn’t sing myself out of.” What’s an artist that doesn’t make art? He found himself asking: “What if I don’t do the thing that I thought made me, me?” While on a walk he found a pen tucked against the curb. It wasn’t special, yet he felt an invitation to pick it up. He took it home and set it to paper, surprised by its vibrant green offering. “I loved the way it looked, the way it would glide when the ink flowed. It felt good to just let go.” He began creating again in this spirit, painting monochrome rings expanding on the page like echoes. “I was weaving a naive little matrix, painting not so much what a flower looks like but how it feels.” They were contemplations unfurling in patterns and waves, no agenda, just delight in color upon color until an image appeared. At first it was fish, then fish gave way to flower heads. The practice was healing, footholds on which to climb up. The paintings amassed into a small collection, enough for an art show he displayed at a hospital. The solo exhibition inspired Little to paint all of the album’s artwork on the beautiful gatefold jacket. “Joy and creativity loop back around… like lunar phases, hidden and then seen. Always felt.” The recording process began at Little’s home studio in Columbus, OH, working with producer Mike Mogis on mixes as well as repeat collaborator producer/engineer Glenn Davis. Like the green ink pen, the songs felt more found than written. “I wanted this album to reflect that - some songs were found on the landscape, others were found on two moons, orbiting that landscape like satellites, disparate pieces pulling on each other, creating a world of song.” The landscape consists of tracks 1-10, including Sweet Nothing, a nearly perfect nugget of breezy pop perfection, written on he and wife Leticia Wiggins’ (flute, piano, vocals) honeymoon. The birth of their first child coincides with the making of the album, making a debut on BITTER SUITE; a 7 minute twisted-folk ripper that ends with a sample of their newborn’s heartbeat in utero. He placed the next 11 songs on two different moons. Songs that had colors, green and orange: Viridian Moon and Cinnamon Moon. –– Gladie –– Don’t Know What You’re In Until You’re Out, the second full-length record from Philadelphia band Gladie, opens with a contemplative instrumental called “Purple Year.” Along with acoustic strumming and a late-night wall of cricket-chirps, cello and gentle horn runs set a dewy, moonlit stage before second track and single “Born Yesterday” bursts alive with drums, bass, and bright guitar chord crunch. It’s like a cold, heart-jolting morning plunge as Augusta Koch’s familiar Philly tenor starts in: “It takes me more time, I’m a little unsteady/I was born yesterday, I forgot I could be somebody.”Koch realized while writing these songs that she had become an entirely different person: a mental, spiritual, and physical renaissance had unfolded over several years that, together, constituted an entirely new reality. Everything had changed, from relationships with friends to relationships with alcohol. Being on the other side of these tectonic shifts offered the sort of clarity that you can only get by going through the darkness: You Don’t Know What You’re In Until You’re Out. It’s optimistic, but it’s scary, too—life changes always are. Who will you be at the end of them? “Born Yesterday,” which Koch wrote about not drinking alcohol anymore, offers a critical revelation that guides the record, and which was hard-earned while experiencing the overwhelming emotional acuity that developed while living without alcohol: “The way I feel, I could fill the ocean/When the wave comes crashing in, it said I’m not a fixed thing/I’m changeable.” Presented by Soda. This is a 21+ event