San Francisco native singer/songwriter Leland Ettinger inhabits the hallucinatory LA seen by transplants like Canadians Neil Young and Joni Mitchell or Sacramento’s Joan Didion (from whom Leland & the Silver Wells derives its name). It is a world where Raymond Chandler’s murderers and victims are Didion’s dreamers of the golden dream. It is a world where the narrative has lost its thread, and the center cannot hold.
“A Drink”, the latest single from the Bay Area’s Leland and the Silver Wells, is a wonderfully capricious arrangement combining sparse, modern string accents with spaghetti western guitar lines that comes together in a cinematic performance that presents an entertaining and relatable view of an impending self-implosion. Seeing as the band draws heavy influence from California of the ’60s and ’70s, the accompanying sepia-drenched video full of vintage clothes, wood-paneled walls, and classic cars is the perfect visual complement to an overall laid back tune.
