Written by: Eric Thompson
Do not let the easy pop facility of this band fool you, there is a heaviness here. Even when the songs are cascading through the verses, riding beachy melodies and Jessica Weiss’ airy vocals, one senses it. As the title of Fear of Men’s debut would suggest, most of the time it’s in the background, watchful, always there. Loom plays like a pristine river in the process of being contaminated. Things look fine, the water splashing over the same rocks it always has. But immerse yourself in it and it immediately becomes clear that something isn’t quite right. You can’t quite put your finger on it. And like that river as it nears some critical mass of pollutants, sometimes the ever present distortion stops looming and takes over to wreak its havoc on the end of the track. And the effect is quite arresting.
The Brighton, U.K. band might need another album or two before they really hit their groove. But if Loom is an indicator of things to come, I’ll be waiting with antennae pointed in their direction. The album starts with a somewhat un-engaging fifty second intro track that bleeds right into one of the stronger songs on the record. Taken together, “Alta / Waterfall” need a minute to get to that place where Fear of Men’s music is most interesting. But once that driving, staccato beat starts along with the feedback saturated melody, we enter that land of misleadingly upbeat pop goodness. It doesn’t take long to read the signs though. “You will never leave me / As long as I inter you with my bones,” sings Weiss during an interlude. And when the beat returns, it’s already too late. The malevolent forces build even as Weiss’ voice skips right through their backyard. “Take me to the waterfall / when it’s over.” When it is over, a loop of piercing guitar distortion has entered the blood and spread into the heart of the song. “Green Sea” also takes a bit of a turn. What begins as an acoustic guitar and single-key piano driven throbber quickly finds itself in a room with more of that eerie feedback and layers of ghostly vocals. The center piece of Loom is “America.” Though it starts with fifteen seconds of Weiss’ voice alone in what sounds like a basement, one listen to the rest of this track calls back the glory days of early nineties shoe-gaze. The melody is harder to discern amidst all the big guitar atmospherics. There is even what sounds like a distorted clarinet, and it all threatens to drown the song for most of its run. But it never quite does. “Drifting out of reach / America carry her.” These ethereal forays are almost captivating enough to carry the album through eleven tracks. Almost. Towards the end of the record, though, one starts to wonder what this band would be capable of if they took a more diverse approach to craft, to songwriting. The last song on Loom, “Atla,” is a ballad in which Weiss sings alone with an acoustic guitar, and the refrain couldn’t be more apropos where this record is concerned: “But if you never leave me / I’ll never understand you / ‘cause I’ll never know / what I could have been without you.” As entrancing as all those grand atmospherics can be, this closer forces the thought that maybe they are a bit of a crutch. It is a sadly sweet tune that one can only hope is a sign of where Fear of Men is heading.
As much as there is to be celebrated on Loom (especially for the dream pop set), if these guys extend themselves and their music, push their own boundaries even moderately on their next record, they will be a sonic force to be reckoned with.
