Loma – 'Half Silences'

Loma's 'Half Silences' was one of my favourite songs of 2019 – but then it disappeared from the web just before the band released their last single, 'Ocotillo'. Turns out that 'Half Silences' was the first song recorded for Loma's forthcoming second album, Don't Shy Away. The band chose to revisit the mix, presumably to make the sound of the song more consistent with the other tracks on the new album.

'Half Silences' is driven by a terse, gritty rhythm track, creating an unsettling space in which the song unfolds. Emily Cross has rarely sounded quite so haunted as she does here, ominously shadowed by Jonathan Meiburg and Dan Duszynski's backing vocals. The glimmering synths and sound effects that flit around the mix like fireflies are fittingly echoed in the DIY video's fireworks, which spark out across the ink-black nightscape of Dripping Springs, Texas, where the album was recorded at Duszynski's studio, Dandysounds.

Even though 'Half Silences' has been around a good while, it remains one of my favourite Loma songs, especially now that the mix has been finessed. Fantastic stuff.  

Don't Shy Away is released by Sub Pop on 23rd October.  

  

Loma – 'Ocotillo'

Back in early 2018, Loma put out their debut self-titled album on Sub Pop. I fawned over it upon its release, and the album's enduring beauty secured it top spot in my list of favourite albums of that year. In 2019, the band released the song 'Half Silences' – which has since disappeared from the internet, presumably as part of the roll-out for LP2 – and now we have the long-awaited announcement: Don't Shy Away, Loma's second record, will be released by Sub Pop on 23rd October.

Don't Shy Away album art by Lisa Cline

The brooding 'Black Willow', which caught the ear of none other than Brian Eno, was the first single off Loma. Don't Shy Away's first single proper, 'Ocotillo', initially feels like it's in a similar vein: the song opens at a restrained tempo, its simple swinging beat and loping bass creating a wide open space for the band to populate. While 'Black Willow' simmered with just-below-the-surface emotion throughout its runtime, 'Ocotillo' immediately feels more open-hearted. The bass pulse pauses to allow Jonathan Meiburg's Spirit of Eden-indebted electric guitar to periodically glimmer in the mix, and Emily Cross's voice is clear and pure. There's plenty of instrumental detail to catch the ear: congas add percussive interest to Dan Duszynski's lithe drums, while saxophone and clarinet swell and recede. Once Cross sings the words "wonderful disarray" towards the halfway point, all hell breaks loose. A squalling horn section overwhelms the mix as Cross's voice ascends into a scream that sounds more liberated than desperate, as if admitting her state of emotional chaos has allowed her to break free. The music certainly feels free, but it's not just a shortcut to a crescendo – the band ride out the stormy weather throughout the song's second half, never quite falling apart, yet transparently turbulent. It's as if 'Black Willow' and Radiohead's 'The National Anthem' had a love-child.

Loma band photo by Bryan C. Parker

During Loma's KEXP session in 2018, Meiburg likened Loma's creative process to collectively blowing a soap bubble that no one wanted to pop. That album's translucent beauty felt delicate and one-of-a-kind. 'Ocotillo', and 'Half Silences' before it, are early proof that Don't Shy Away is likely to be a bolder, more strident return, the band confident in their collective capacity to muster magic. 

Loma – Loma

The fact that Shearwater’s Jonathan Meiburg has chosen this musical path following 2016’s Jet Plane and Oxbow is heartening. For me, Cross Record’s Wabi-Sabi, released the same year, succeeded in all the ways JPAO stumbled – by paying heed to nuance, texture, atmosphere. JPAO felt like it was over-reaching, striving in vain for universality. Loma is intimacy incarnate.

The backstory goes some way towards explaining how this album ended up sounding the way it does. Shearwater and Cross Record (Emily Cross and Dan Duszynski) toured together, then Meiburg invited the duo to collaborate with him – but it's not quite the simple overlap between Shearwater and Cross Record one might expect. Meiburg's presence is subtle rather than overt. It's only really on mesmerising closer 'Black Willow' that Meiburg's voice is clearly heard, his backing vocals blending with Cross to create something both eerie and reassuring. In writing songs for Cross to sing, Meiburg has retreated to a more affecting songwriting style that brings out the best in everyone involved. The result is an album on which every moment feels lovingly crafted and deeply felt.

Whether tracing out delicate spider webs of sound ('I Don't Want Children'), digging deep into nightmarish ambient-rock ('White Glass') or channelling the beauty of late-era Talk Talk ('Sundogs'), Loma perpetually shifts across its 10 songs, while each piece feels drawn from the same well of inspiration. Learning that Cross and Duszynski's marriage came to an end during the album's creation only lends it further resonance.

I am extremely here for these songs, this sound. I hear vulnerability, sadness, defiance and tenderness. I feel it deeply. Over and over again. I doubt I'll hear a better record this year – and it's only March.

Shearwater – Jet Plane and Oxbow

When I first moved to Melbourne and joined a band, I received some advice I shouldn't have heeded. After our first gig, a friend's wife recommended that I face the crowd more and perform in a way that acknowledged someone was watching. (Admittedly, I was playing in an instrumental band, which can be notoriously boring to watch unless there are visuals.) I tried being more animated for a couple of the gigs that came after, but it felt weird and unnatural, so I gave up and concentrated on playing the music well, hoping this would be enough for anyone watching.

What's this got to do with Shearwater? Well, this new album sounds like Jonathan Meiburg is self-conscious that more people than ever will be listening to his music, all of whom want to be impressed – and few of them will be paying for the privilege. Like its superb predecessor Animal Joy (2012), and the disposable covers album Fellow Travelers (2013) that followed, Jet Plane and Oxbow is released on Sub Pop. The stakes are high. It sounds like Meiburg may have considered that he needs to go big or go home. (He does have a parallel career as an ornithologist, so if Shearwater tanks, he could do that instead?) The promotional emails touting this release implored Shearwater fans to preorder, especially if they want the band to tour Australia. (I live in Australia, I'd love to see the band live, so my preorder dollars were immediately thrown their way.)

As much as I applaud the band's perspicacity, something feels awry. Let's suppose, for a moment, that it's possible to create a mid-tier indie-rock album in the 21st century without paying any attention to what's going on in the music industry, or of hoping to recoup the hours and dollars invested. Let's suppose that this music was created because its creators had a burning desire to do so – that this music needed to be made. Then, let's listen to Jet Plane and Oxbow and wonder how Shearwater got here, to these particular eleven songs. Much like Wild Beasts and Lower Dens – two bands whose recent albums (Present Tense and Escape From Evil, respectively) I also eagerly anticipated – there have been pre-release murmurings of a more '80s-sounding direction for Shearwater. First single 'Quiet Americans' seemed to suggest as much, with its prominent synth lines, strident drum sounds and in-your-face production.

Indeed, in an interview with Michael Azerrad on the Sub Pop website, Jonathan Meiburg makes reference to Bowie's Scary Monsters, Eno and Byrne's My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts, and Talking Heads' Remain In Light as influences. Great albums all, but their relationship with Jet Plane feels tangential at best. Those albums may have inspired Meiburg to employ synths, rototoms and gated snares, but these instrumental additions feel superficial.

What seems to have changed is Meiburg's confidence in occasionally reaching for a sound that could best be described as 'stadium rock'. When this confidence over-reaches, I can't help but cringe in embarrassment. 'Pale Kings' is the worst culprit, its breakneck banjos falling over themselves to keep up with the fist-pumping pace, the songwriting falling short of Meiburg's ambition. As far as I'm concerned, the song should never have made the final cut, which is especially perplexing when more worthy songs, such as 'Evidence' (the demo of which features on the Headwaters podcast), were abandoned. Later in the album, 'Wildlife in America' is a bland and uninspiring piano ballad, and 'Radio Silence' strives for a motorik momentum that soon wears out its welcome, dragging on for nearly seven minutes.

That said, when Jet Plane hits home, its power is undeniable. 'Backchannels' is stunning, with a guitar break reminiscent of Talk Talk's sublime Laughing Stock. 'Filaments' sounds like a re-work of Radiohead's 'Bangers and Mash', all bass filth and percussive clatter. New single 'Only Child' has elegance and restraint on its side, with a lovely turnaround on the bass. 'Glass Bones' is an anthemic rock song done right, its riff down and dirty enough to cut through my skepticism. And glorious closer 'Stray Light At Clouds Hill' injects some welcome space into the mix, its vocals sent boomeranging through a tape delay.

Listening to the Headwaters podcast, it sounds like Meiburg and his band developed the songs on Jet Plane through jamming. However, little on this album conveys these origins. Somewhere along the way, something has slipped off kilter, taking Shearwater in an unsatisfying direction for such a great band. With a frontman as intelligent and articulate as Jonathan Meiburg, some of the musical decisions here are frustratingly inexplicable. My expectations of this release were high, but like Spoon's latest album They Want Your Soul, what could've been a great album is simply a quite good one.