The first two minutes and eleven seconds of The Loom‘s latest offering, Teeth, had me convinced that this review wasn’t going to be the most glowing thing I’d ever written. The album’s starter track “With Legs” comes in a little too slow and shuffling for my liking – a little too folksy and downtrodden. But about halfway through, the song suddenly gets to its feet and gets own to business with trumpet, hand claps, tambourine, a forcefully strummed banjo and a bit of rockish guitar noodling, and I’m all kinds of on board.
Luckily, the remainder of the album also unfolds quite nicely. The Loom have amassed an impressive collection of musicians who aren’t concerned with showboating their skills or crowding the album with too many sounds. Rather, the multitude of instruments almost always complement each other; the guitar solos are well-placed, the banjo is mellow and knows when to tone down the twang, and the trumpet floats in and out as needed, beautiful and sparing.
One of my personal favourites is “A Song of Faint Praise.” I adore the lilting, breathy trumpet and the sugar sweet guitar tone whose melody reminds me of The Velvet Underground‘s “Stephanie Says” or “Sunday Morning”. And as with the first track on the album, halfway through “Faint Praise”, The Loom switch it up and dig into something really incredible with a new guitar riff that flows, simple and perfect, into a foot-stomping jam that throws itself widely and organically open. If you ever get the chance to see The Loom live, keep your ears peeled for this song. I feel like it would be one of those performances you’d gush to all your friends about, using adjectives like “atmospheric” and “thundering.”
But the following track, “For All My Friends in Spring, For All My Friends in Fall”, always ends up leaving me conflicted. It has half of me melting at the deep, cotton-shoved-in-cheeks sound of John Fanning’s voice in combination with the smoothly satisfying instrumentals while the other half of me kind of really, really hates what Sydney Price’s pretty but overly-countrified voice does to this song. What could’ve been a quiet, late night anthem for wandering the city streets becomes a little too Sarah Harmer/Rosie Thomas-esque for a song that (lyrics aside) sounds like something penned by The National.
In fact, this clash of vocal styles is a problem that kept coming up over and over again for me on Teeth. I didn’t even like Fanning’s voice at first, given that it sounds an awful lot like Alan Rickman. And although I still stand firmly behind that observation, I’ve come to embrace the Severus Snape tonality. Price’s voice, however, never truly grew on me—at least not within the context of The Loom. Her voice is by no means awful or obnoxious, it’s just that, to my ears, it doesn’t ever find a comfy home on Teeth.
Vocal homelessness aside, this album is a treat for the ears. The band understands that keeping compositions simple can often be a recipe for delicious music-making, while still subtly making the most of each component (the aforementioned rumbly man voice, the well-placed guitar solos, the mellowed out banjo and the sweet, sweet trumpet). They also appeal to me on a percussive level, using drums in the way that I think drums should be used—often and with emphasis on the low, thudding brilliance of the tom-tom.
So! If you don’t mind a little over-countrification and/or Severus Snape influence in your orchestral folk-pop, sink your teeth into The Loom.
(Can I get an amen for wordplay? Hmm? No? Okay.)
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For more of The Loom:
And don’t forget to check out the band when they play at El Mocambo on Friday, July 16th!
