053: Loma - 'Broken Doorbell'
“It’s like a demon enters the room, whenever we get together,” Emily Cross was quoted as saying as an introduction to her band's new album, and that sense of possessive darkness is indeed present through much of the songs that make up Loma's very special How Will I Live Without A Body LP.
The band's third collection, released last week via Sub Pop, is an astounding achievement, for the puzzling sounds it makes, but also because of what it took to bring it together in the first place. Since the trio's second effort - 2020's Don't Shy Away - Cross moved to Dorset in the UK to become an end-of-life doula, Jonathan Meiburg relocated to Germany, while Dan Duszynski remained in the dusty heat of Texas that had, until that point, been the band's beating heart.
To shrink the story to its most pertinent moment, after series of stumbling starts, the three members eventually found their way to a small stone cottage in the English countryside to finally make the record as we hear it today, and that sense of time and space and shadowed corners reverberates across the record, adding a greater and more complex depth to their already-impressive catalogue of songs.
Tracks like 'How It Starts' and 'Affinity' bristle with a natural cold, glistening frost on a starry night, while other moments zoom right in to the fine and finer details; a breath held, the creak of a chair, skin upon string scratched into sound.
It's perhaps 'Broken Doorbell' that is most indicative of the band's creativity, a near-eight-minute elegy that flickers like a candle in the deep dark, throwing shapes upon the faded walls. Spacious and odd and richly ambiguous, it's a remarkable piece of music; a part of a greater story but also a story unto itself, if you could break the spell enough to really listen to the words that run out of it.
It ends, finally, without ever fully letting go, though it often threatens to do so, instead it retreats back into the night, just the sound of waves breaking outside the window, rolling out and in and out again, a repetitive dance of their own.
How Will I Live Without A Body is out now, via Sub Pop
~
If you're enjoingy this content please consider a paid subscription ~ or you can tip GFP via ko-fi here
three / six / five is a daily music-sharing project from gold flake paint; read more about the idea here
E m b r a c e
S i n c e r i t y
