Photo By Aviva Cohen

If there is one thing that can be said about The Loom, it would be that their swelling horns, authoritative downbeats, and generally serene harmonies can haunt any room with their earthy sound – even a nearly-empty El Mocambo this past Friday night.

The Brooklyn six-piece took to a Toronto stage for the first time Friday night, delivering jangling chord progressions and eerie desert-like chants, creating a scene that looked and sounded as if Edward Sharpe had lost about half of his Magnetic Zeroes and was stranded in some sort of Middle Eastern desert terrain.

The Loom pounded through their set list, taking little time to breath between one spiritual and tranquilizing hymn-like number to the next, while Lis Rubard quickly alternated between French horn and trumpet mid-song, keeping in time with the band’s creatively abrupt tempo changes. The constant and dreamy harmonies featured throughout The Loom’s catalogue were delivered skillfully by lead vocalists John Fanning and Sarah Renfro, although the articulation of the lyrics were inaudible for the majority of the set, unlike on the recordings.

“Song for the Winter Sun,” boasts the choral proclamation of “This year we will not, This year we will not, Sleep our way, Through the winter,” whose eeriness resonated not only throughout the El Mo, but possibly all the way into Chinatown.

Reaching the end of their set, the band played a song Fanning called “Snowed In,” although the aggressive tribal-like bass drums and warm horns and banjo that carried out the number did not correlate with the image of snow, but rather the same feeling of dust, dirt, and penetrating ultraviolet rays that had been a constant image throughout the show.

Ending the show with “Helena,”  The Loom had knocked out about 10 songs, all of which were within the same desert-like realm, but all of which were played with heart, soul, and any third party that may be affiliated with such things, despite the meager number of onlookers.

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