How Will I Live Without A Body? Loma

A good question, Loma, but under the current circumstance I'm afraid all options do not look good. But then with the Internet anyone might be able to live forever. A matter of planning pre-written posts is a way. Being relevant might become an issue after a while though.

That aside, Loma's album has put another thought in my mind. I realised all of a sudden how much I'm listening to female singers in the past years. Most of my new favourites have female singers. This used to be a huge exception, Patti Smith, Jefferson Airplane, Kate Bush, e.g. Most of my favourites of old, all have a male singer.

What triggered the thought? The opening song of How Will I Live Without A Body?. It made me think of the new La Luz album immediately. From there my mind opened further and I looked at the stack of recent albums and yes, the truth was suddenly revealed. 'Please, Come In', as it were. The song has that same sort of dreamy atmosphere and the sleepy way of singing and self-harmonising as several modern female singers and La Luz have.

Loma is a word I for some reason associate with being at rest, being relaxed. I have no idea whether it has a meaning nor what that meaning is. My Dutch mind tells me this. And the music underscores the association. The opening song may be the loudest at that and starts already so sleepy.

What I remember is that Loma has a link with the band Shearwater. The link is singer-guitarist Jonathan Meiburg. Together with Emily Cross and Dan Duszynski he formed Loma in 2017. This is their third album together. In Loma Emily Cross is the singer, singing slowly with a dreamy yet serious voice over music that moves from dreamy to serious. Several songs are laden with the anticipation of unknown things to come. Unknown whether pleasant or unwanted. This results in a tension that comes through in several songs in the form of a tensed background and escaping bursts of notes from an instrument, whatever that instrument is.

The result is that the music on How Will I Live Without A Body? demands as it were listening. What happens next?, is a question that keeps pressing itself to me. In that sense it is everything but a Shearwater album. I have several but Loma is a different beast alright. Where the singing is concerned, I can recommend Dutch-Belgian singer Chantal Acda here for people from other countries and someone like Chris Eckman, the former The Walkabouts singer and songwriter. Loma's music has something European over it.

At face value, my description might well lead to the conclusion that How Will I Live Without A Body? is an album to play late at night with a good glass of wine just before going to bed and to get into the mood for sleeping. Put on a headset however and ghostlike vocals and erupting sounds will disturb your sleepy mood though. 'How It Starts' is a highlight here, with its soft yet driving rhythm and haunting vocals. Loma really knows how to set the mood in 'How It Starts'. This album will only work in the suggested way when you're not listening - and miss out on all the fun!

I knew of the previous two records but they passed me by. You can find a review of the first album by Erwin Zijleman, I found, on this blog. My active introduction is a very pleasant one.

Wout de Natris

You can listen to and order How Will I Live Without A Body? here:

https://lomamusic.bandcamp.com/album/how-will-i-live-without-a-body