Volkswagon Music 4

The Loft Club - Dreaming The Impossible, album review

Symmetry of Sound

Symmetry: here we are on a hot summer’s day in Devon and I’m listening to a hot new band from Devon. The ‘new’ is relative, as is the heat in as much as we might expect more of it in August, but the weather is transitory as much as it is fickle. The Loft Club formed in 2015, and that is still newish, but their sound can trace its lineage back to the one thing that does stay constant and survives: good music, theirs most noticeably for me thriving on harmonies you might like to tag as West Coast but which actually informs any good use of such, as in Americana, another tag, that some of their songs suggest. It’s all in the hearing and the liking. As a general comment, the music they play can be reminiscent of what I liked in the mid to late 60s, but it is also the music Ronnie Sullivan would walk on to in the World Snooker Championships.

The album title track and album opener begins with sways of guitar chords that break into 90s’ return-rock echoes and this reminds too from where the influences, but also current fine song-writing, emanates. Second Heard Her Say keeps the rockier underscore in tight rhythms but also ‘lalala’ vocal inserts that play with its pop sensibilities – an expanded atmospheric break just over halfway through leads onto some other playful bass and drum runs before the ‘lalala’ returns. It’s third I’m Just a Man that punches more, introductory feedback setting up a catchy Beatles-esque groove.

This is the nature of the songcraft and performance. True Love is a sweet ballad with a sweep of those guitar swathes and matching vocal harmony rises, a genuinely pretty song that does remind of Crowded House, as it does a little in the next Keep Me Coming Home: a touchstone, like any others, as compliment to quality and recognition there will always be links and that ‘lineage’ I mentioned earlier. Let it Slide is once more blessed with great vocal harmonies, the guitar work fuzzed through for grittier impact and a bass line dancing pertinently: I have a natural inclination to that ‘heavier’ sound and this is catchy, the drumming joining in the outrun that gets almost psychedelicised.

Now, Made in England, let’s be clear, is no post-Brexit paean, served with a ‘cup of tea’ and other lyrics I need to spend some more time listening to – the point is this first hearing picks up on the musicality and there are clearly more depths beyond that. Penultimate song Waves rolls on its shore with a brooding start and breaks into more of those strong harmonies and guitar surges as signature; the closer Flicker features Grammy Award winning Lisa Leob so there’s a noteworthy coup, but only if it works – and it does: this is upbeat and shines in the vocal pleasantries that have been a significant feature throughout. 

The band: Daniel Schamroth - Vocals/guitar; Jamie Whyte - Bass/vocals; Kieran Chalmers - Drums; Amy O'Loughlin - Vocals; Sam Piper - Guitar