Tiburones perform tonight at Mississippi Studios (3939 N Mississippi) with Death Songs and Clarke & the Himselfs. More details here.
Y La Bamba’s Luz Elena Mendoza and Death Songs’ Nick Delffs connected creatively when their bands shared a 2012 tour down the West Coast. Upon returning home to Portland, that connection was never intended to evolve into a new band. It just did so on its own.
“We started sharing each other’s songs and playing together, and definitely having a connection that you can’t really force,” Mendoza says. “It’s like a beautiful experience and exchange and we just kind of developed. Basically, it’s like growing. We were growing. It’s not like we were trying to be in a band together. We were just playing.”
And they didn’t stop. Three years after that initial tour, Mendoza and Delffs’ band, Tiburones, is releasing its debut album, Eva.
The group’s lineup includes Ali Clarys (vocals/synth), Jake Ransom (percussion/vibraphone), Sam Stidham (bass), and Lauren Vidal (percussion/guitar), each of whom fuel the fire created by Delffs and Mendoza, whose combined aesthetic courses through the new album. Eva smolders and soars with the kind of folkloric, Latin-tinged indie-pop that has made Y La Bamba one of Portland’s most beloved bands. At the same time, it skitters with a jittery brand of rock ‘n’ soul, à la Death Songs and Delffs’ previous band, the Shaky Hands.
It’s certainly no shock that Tiburones sounds like two distinctive songwriters coming together. What’s beautiful about Eva is just how complementary their styles sound, and how seamlessly they mesh.