On June 28th, Loma (Emily Cross, Dan Duszynski, Jonathan Meiburg) will release How Will I Live Without A Body?, their third album. The eleven-track effort features the highlights “Pink Sky,” “Affinity,” and the moving first single and accompanying official video for “How It Starts,” directed by and starring Loma’s Emily Cross.
How Will I Live Without A Body? was produced and recorded by Loma in England, Texas, and Germany, mixed by Dan Duszynski and mastered by Steve Fallone at Sterling Sound in New York. All songs were composed by the group—with a few nudges from a unique AI (see below).
How Will I Live Without a Body? is a gorgeous, unique, and oddly comforting album about partnership, loss, regeneration, and fighting the feeling that we’re all in this alone. Many of its songs have a feeling of restless motion; faceless characters drift through meetings and partings, tangling together and slipping away.
Throughout, the core of Loma’s sound remains intact: earthy, organic and deeply human, anchored by Cross’s cool, clear voice. Loma’s previous album, Don’t Shy Away, was galvanized by the encouragement of Brian Eno. This time, they were inspired by another hero, Laurie Anderson, who offered a chance to work with an AI trained on her work. Meiburg sent two photos; Anderson’s AI responded with two haunting poems. “We used fragments of these poems in ‘How It Starts’ and ‘Affinity’,” he says. “And then Dan noticed that one of AI-Laurie’s lines, ‘How will I live without a body?’ would be a perfect name for the album, since we’d nearly lost sight of each other in the recording process.” [See longer bio below].
As for How Will I Live Without A Body?’s cover art, returning collaborator Lisa Cline took inspiration from the histories of “bog people,” human cadavers found naturally mummified in peat bogs. (From Wikipedia: “These “bodies” are both geographically and chronologically widespread, having been dated to between 8000 BCE and the Second World War.”).
How Will I Live Without A Body? is available to preorder on CD/LP/digitally worldwide from Sub Pop. LP preorders from megamart.subpop.com, and select independent stores in North America will receive the Loser edition on Transparent Smoke Vinyl. In the UK and Europe, LP preorders through Sub Pop’s new Mega Mart 2, and UK/EU Independent retailers will receive the Loser edition on Neon Orange Vinyl (All whilst stock lasts!)
About Loma’s How Will I Live Without A Body?:
“This is how it starts to move again”
January 2023, Dorset, UK. Snow is piled at the door, icy roads are closed, and Emily Cross is in a coffin—not a promising setting for a rebirth. But for Loma, this is where they bring their band back from the brink.
“It’s like a demon enters the room whenever we get together,” writer, singer, and instrumentalist Cross says of the struggle to bring new Loma music into the world. Following the release of their 2020 second album, Don’t Shy Away, Loma’s three members were cast around the globe, and the band—not for the first time—entered a deep sleep.
Multi-instrumentalist and recording engineer Dan Duszynski remained in his studio in central Texas, but Cross, a UK citizen, moved to Dorset, and writer and instrumentalist Jonathan Meiburg left the US for Germany to research a book. In the pandemic years, being in the same room was impossible, and attempts to start a new record faltered.
“We got lost,” admits Meiburg, “and stayed that way.” The trio’s personal lives diverged, and remote sessions didn’t gel; a post-pandemic reunion in Texas was cut to a few days by an illness, and a pile of half-finished tracks was an unruly mess. The following winter, in an attempt to salvage the record and the band, Cross suggested they regroup in the UK, in the tiny stone house—once a coffin-maker’s workshop—where she works as an end-of-life doula. With minimal recording gear and few instruments, Loma turned two whitewashed rooms into a makeshift studio, using a coffin woven from willow branches as a vocal booth.
It was a turning point. “There was a sense of, well, this is it,” Meiburg recalls. “And when the ice storm swept in I thought: here we go again, even the elements are against us. But sitting in our heavy coats around a little electric radiator, we realized how much we’d missed each other—and that just being together was precious.”
They scrapped much of what they’d made, and let a new place set a new course. The first two Loma albums featured the sounds of Texan animals and landscapes; this time, the one-lane roads, hedgerows and dark skies of Dorset gave the new songs an ineffable but unmistakable Englishness. The band used the ruin of a 12th-century chapel as a reverb chamber—surprising hillwalkers who peeked in to find them singing to no one—and the sounds of Cross’s chilly workshop wormed their way into the recording: a leaky pipe, a drummer’s brushes on a metal lampshade, voices left on an ancient answering machine.
What emerged was How Will I Live Without A Body?: a gorgeous, unique, and oddly comforting album about partnership, loss, regeneration, and fighting the feeling that we’re all in this alone. Many of its songs have a feeling of restless motion; faceless characters drift through meetings and partings, tangling together and slipping away. “I Swallowed A Stone” is like a nightmare with a happy ending; “How It Starts” and “Broken Doorbell” reflect on the challenge (and necessity) of wrestling with agoraphobia. Though the record nods to the trio’s separate lives— a German percussion ensemble, a pair of Texan owls, and the surf at Chesil Beach make guest appearances—the core of Loma’s sound remains intact: earthy, organic and deeply human, anchored by Cross’s cool, clear voice.
Most artists want their records to be listened to as a whole. But with Loma it’s particularly rewarding, and How Will I Live Without A Body? reveals itself more with every listen. Songs that begin as riddles swim into focus when listened to in sequence; images return and interact in unexpected ways, and something like a narrative begins to form. It’s also a record of two distinct halves: A compelling sense of wandering engulfs the A-side, as the trudging progress of opener ‘Please, Come In’ staggers and sways through succeeding tracks to the album’s centerpiece, ‘How It Starts’—which gathers strength and purpose, flooding the B-side with a hope that embraces darkness without surrendering to it.
Loma’s previous album, Don’t Shy Away, was galvanised by the unexpected encouragement (and eventual contributions) of Brian Eno. This time, they were inspired by another hero, Laurie Anderson, who offered a chance to work with an AI trained on her entire body of work. Meiburg sent a photo from his book-in-progress about the once and future life of Antarctica; Anderson’s AI responded with two haunting poems. “We used parts of them in a few songs,” he says. “And then Dan noticed that one of its lines, ‘How will I live without a body?’ would be a perfect name for the album, since we nearly lost sight of each other in the recording process.” Anderson, Meiburg adds, was happy for the band to use the title. “I think she was tickled that her AI doppelganger is running around naming other people’s records.”
But in the end, Loma’s efforts to reconnect with one another are the album’s central focus: What do you owe a shared past, when everyone and everything has changed? “Making this record tested us all,” says Duszynski. “I think that feeling was alchemized through the music.” Alchemized, because How Will I Live Without A Body? is by no means a stressed-out record: an undercurrent of deep calm runs through it. “Somehow, out of the chaos, we made something that sounds very relaxed,” Cross notes, mystified. But maybe ‘relaxed’ isn’t the right word. It’s more like a feeling of relief, of making it through a tough journey together. “I’ve never run a marathon,” Cross says. “But I can imagine it’s kind of what that feels like.” This is how it starts, to move again.
Past praise For Loma:
“Loma’s music unspools in vivid panoramas - sometimes downbeat and rainy, sometimes splashy and urgent, reminiscent of the mid-‘90s school of Bowery Electric post-rock.” - MOJO
“Gorgeous, otherworldly music” - STEREOGUM
“…the band builds out dazzling instrumental environments like dense, dynamic undergrowth. Synths and guitars intertwine, coiling into a labyrinthine backdrop as their edges blur.” - Pitchfork
Loma How Will I Live Without A Body?
Tracklisting 1. Please, Come In 2. Arrhythmia 3. Unbraiding 4. I Swallowed a Stone 5. How It Starts 6. Dark Trio 7. A Steady Mind 8. Pink Sky 9. Broken Doorbell 10. Affinity 11. Turnaround
Loma has delivered a bright new video for their performance of “Going Out,” a cover of Danish pop artist Dinner’s 2014 single. The visual, directed by and starring Loma’s Emily Cross, follows the singer on a gorgeous sunny day throughout the woods and meadows of southern coastal England, where going out is a new—and slightly nervous—prospect.
Loma’s Dan Duszynski says of the song, “Songs are like cats—sometimes they just pick you. Emily and I first heard “Going Out” while we were playing at a record store in Austin a few years ago. I went to the counter to ask who it was, and the album (Dinner’s Three EPs) is still in rotation at our home/studio. We couldn’t resist making our own version because it always cheers us up. Who doesn’t need that right now?”
Loma’s Don’t Shy Away, the group’s incredible and absorbing album from 2020, is available now on CD/LP/CS/DL worldwide through Sub Pop. The eleven-track effort, which features lyric videos for “Homing” and “Ocotillo” and official videos for “Half Silences,” “Don’t Shy Away,” “I Fix My Gaze,” and “Elliptical Days,” was produced and recorded by the band at Dandysounds in Dripping Strings, Texas—except for “Homing,” which was produced by Brian Eno.
Don’t Shy Away saw praise from international outlets like MOJO, Uncut, BBC 6 Music, Pitchfork, Rolling Stone,Stereogum, Exclaim, Bandcamp, Brooklyn Vegan, Under the Radar, Sydney Morning Herald, The Line of Best Fit, Record Collector, All Music, Dusted, Our Culture, and more. Loma is currently at work on the follow-up to Don‘t Shy Away.
What people are saying about Loma’s Don’t Shy Away: “Loma’s music unspools in vivid panoramas - sometimes downbeat and rainy, sometimes splashy and urgent, reminiscent of the mid-‘90s school of Bowery Electric post-rock. Yet the trio ensure all the glitches and layers (clarinet, brass, guitar) add bright pin-sharp accents not blurry textural flab, Cross’s voice glinting through ‘Blue Rainbow’s’ electro-cabaret judder or the Morphine-like rumble of ‘Ocotillo’.” ★★★★ MOJO
“Don’t Shy Away is a stronger, fully realized collection than its predecessor, kicking off with the absorbing opening trio — “I Fix My Gaze,” “Ocotillo,” and “Half Silences,” each elevated by singer Emily Cross’ bewitching vocals — and never letting up from there.” [“The Best Albums of October 2020”] - Rolling Stone
“…Don’t Shy Away is an invitation. It honors the sacred space of uncertainty, acknowledging lingering darkness while trusting in the possibility that brighter, more brilliant worlds lie within reach.” - Pitchfork
“Don’t Shy Away is ultimately as gratifying as it is ambitious. Brian Eno was right: Loma are the real deal.” [8/10] -Exclaim!
“For listeners who have a penchant for darker, glossier rock in the vein of Portishead, Jane Weaver, or even Radiohead, this is an essential listen.” [8/10] - The Line Of Best Fit
”Don’t Shy Away is an absolutely beautiful record – hypnotic, haunting, mysterious and comforting” - Brooklyn Vegan
“Fans longing for the return of Portishead will find solace in the grey-skied gloom of songs like “Thorn”, “Half Silences” or the pulsing “Given A Sign.” This is contrasted with the brightness shining through the stately instrumentation of “Elliptical Days” or the cycling synths of “Breaking Waves Like A Stone,” swelling in size towards its triumphant conclusion.” [“Album of the Day”] - Bandcamp
“To anyone enamored with the effortless elegance of Loma’s debut, some of Don’t Shy Away’s more adventurous and synth-heavy production may feel a little jarring. However, surrender to the album’s luscious sound design, emotive vocal performances and smart narrative arc and it can be just as intoxicating. As far as front-to-back album listening experiences go, it’s among the year’s best.” - Dusted
“Don’t Shy Away is a spectacular album, a vivid record, which gently deals with the themes of loneliness, temporariness and finding light in absolute darkness.” - Music Letter
“Bigger in scope than the three piece’s self titled debut, Don’t Shy Away is on a whole other sonic level. It encourages us to not just exist in the spaces that we inhabit, but to find every possibility they could offer. As second records go, they don’t come much more mesmerically splendorous than this.”- Secret Meeting
“All in all, Don’t Shy Away is gracefully immersive, aesthetically ambitious and more than worth a listen.” - MXDWN
“There’s healthy disarray, there’s beauty, and there’s real poignant sadness but most of all there’s true humanity.” [8.5/10] - Still Listening
“Unfurling with a patient and solitary kind of splendour, their music is evocative but never perfunctory, brimming with textures that are vaporous yet vividly drawn. Don’t Shy Away distils those elements that were present in their debut to a more refined form, resulting in their most mesmerizing and rewarding effort yet.” ★★★★ - Our Culture
“In sound and narrative, indie supergroup Loma deliver an intelligent and emotive piece of post-modern cinema on their superb sophomore album, Don’t Shy Away.” -The Revue
Stream the album in full here starting tomorrow, Friday, October 23rd, and watch the band’s Don’t Shy Away Sessions live performances October 23rd-29th.
★★★★ MOJO 8/10 Uncut 8/10 Exclaim! “Gorgeous, otherworldly music” Stereogum “Album of the Day” BBC 6 Music
Loma’s Don’t Shy Away, their incredible and absorbing second album, will be available on CD/LP/CS/DL tomorrow, Friday, October 23rd worldwide through Sub Pop. The eleven-track effort, which features lyric videos for “Homing” and “Ocotillo” and official videos for “Half Silences,” “Don’t Shy Away,” “I Fix My Gaze,” and “Elliptical Days,” was produced and recorded by the band at Dandysounds in Dripping Strings, Texas—except for “Homing” (featured above!), which was produced by Brian Eno.
MOJO says of Don’t Shy Away, “Loma’s music unspools in vivid panoramas - sometimes downbeat and rainy, sometimes splashy and urgent, reminiscent of the mid-‘90s school of Bowery Electric post-rock. Yet the trio ensure all the glitches and layers (clarinet, brass, guitar) add bright pin-sharp accents not blurry textural flab, Cross’s voice glinting through ‘Blue Rainbow’s’ electro-cabaret judder or the Morphine-like rumble of ‘Ocotillo’ (4/5).” Exclaim! says: “Don’t Shy Away is ultimately as gratifying as it is ambitious. Brian Eno was right: Loma are the real deal (8/10).”
Uncut praises the album’s’ “Atmospheric melodies” and how “Cross’ otherworldly vocals blend to absorbing effect (8/10,” while Secret Meeting raves, “Bigger in scope than the three piece’s self titled debut, Don’t Shy Away is on a whole other sonic level. It encourages us to not just exist in the spaces that we inhabit, but to find every possibility they could offer. As second records go, they don’t come much more mesmerically splendorous than this.” And Stereogum, in a glowing track review of “Elliptical Days,” says “Loma are making some gorgeous, otherworldly music.”
And today, BBC’s “6 Music” has made Don’t Shy Away its “Album of the Day.”
[Photo Credit: Bryan C. Parker]
In celebration of the album’s release, Loma is presenting the Don’t Shy Away Sessions, a week-long series of live performances of songs from the album (and an interview with the band). The sessions kick off tomorrow, October 23rd via IGTV and Loma’s YouTube channel and were recorded in June 2020 in Dripping Springs, Texas.
The performances run daily from October 23rd to October 29th and will be public every day at Noon PT / 7 pm GMT, and were all shot by the band’s friend and photographer, Bryan C. Parker. The schedule is as follows:
October 23: “Ocotillo” October 24: “Half Silences” October 25: “I Fix My Gaze” October 26: Loma Interview October 27: “Don’t Shy Away” October 28: “Elliptical Days” October 29: “Homing”
Loma’s Jonathan Meiburg has also announced the publication date of his first book, A Most Remarkable Creature: The Hidden Life and Epic Journey of the World’s Smartest Birds of Prey. It’s a wild and entertaining romp through our world’s deep history in the company of the caracaras—intelligent, crow-like South American falcons whose sharp minds and mischievous habits baffled and amused Darwin. The book will be published on March 30, 2021 by Knopf Doubleday in the US and The Bodley Head in the UK,and is available for pre-order now at jonathanmeiburg.com.
Loma has delivered an official video for “Elliptical Days,” a new track offering from their soon-to-be-released and highly anticipated album Don’t Shy Away. Band member Emily Cross dances and manipulates floodlights in the remote darkness of a rural Texas night, playing on the song’s lyrical themes of death and rebirth (“Light gathering/In the open spaces;” “Look at the difference you made/small as a star in the evening”) to deliver yet another arresting visual to the album’s uniquely lush and panoramic sound. “Elliptical Days” was directed and edited by Cross and fellow Loman Dan Duszynski in Dripping Springs, Texas.
Of the song, Cross had this to offer: “‘Elliptical Days’ was one of those songs that was pretty well fleshed out by Dan and Jonathan by the time I heard it. I loved how different it sounded from what we usually make together, but it was somehow still in the Loma realm—and the horn arrangement made it really special for me. Her bandmate Jonathan Meiburg concurs: “The horn session for Don’t Shy Away was one of the most exciting moments in making the record. They drove out to the studio one evening and blew their hearts out for three hours, without hearing any of the songs beforehand. I think they left feeling a bit confused about what kind of record this was, but they were really good sports about it.”
Duszynski adds: “I started ‘Elliptical Days’ as a sketch in Ableton- an exercise to learn the software and dig through some synth sounds. Jonathan heard me messing with it and walked into the control room asking, “Can we use this?” The song really came to life as he and our good friend (and touring Loman) Emily Lee started overdubbing piano and koto parts—and as usual, our collaboration transcended what any of us could do alone.”
Don’t Shy Away will be available on CD/LP/CS/DL October 23rd, 2020 worldwide through Sub Pop.
On Friday, October 2nd, Sub Pop artists past and present – new signees CHAI, The Gotobeds (w/ Chicago’s Daddy’s Boy), Loma, METZ, The Postal Service, Chad VanGaalen, and Wolf Parade – will be offering a variety of new and unreleased material, special sales and deals through Bandcamp’s “No Revenue Share Day” aka #BandcampFriday.
CHAI’s “Donuts Mind If I Do” is a new song and the band’s label debut, available digitally now from Sub Pop. “Donuts…” will also be available on the group’s forthcoming “Donuts Mind If I Do” b/w “Plastic Love” 7” single out this November. This limited edition 7” is available to pre-order in two color options through Bandcamp – on either orange or turquoise colored vinyl.
$2 for both tracks, $1 per track (digitally).
$8 for the 7” single (physical + while supplies last).
Est. ship date for the 7” single is late November.
The Gotobeds “Sunny Youth” / Daddy’s Boy “Family Cat” is a split digital single with proceeds going to Prison Neighborhood Arts Project. “Sunny Youth” was recorded during sessions for The Gotobeds’ Blood // Sugar // Secs // Traffic, their Sub Pop debut, while Daddy’s Boy’s “Family Cat” was recorded earlier this year at Electrical Audio in Chicago by Steve Albini. Both tracks are previously unreleased.
$1 per track.
Kiwi. Jr’s “Undecided Voters” is the just-released, darkly comic and prescient single from the Toronto-based, newly signed Sub Pop band.
$1 per track.
Loma’s self-released “Wheal Owles,” is a long, loose, haunting, and very human 15-minute instrumental. Emily Cross on clarinet, Jonathan Meiburg on guitar, Dan Duszyniski on drums.
$5 for the track.
METZ’s entire digital discography, including the digital pre-order for Atlas Vending, their forthcoming album out October 9th, 2020 on Sub Pop, is available for sale at 35% off (or $39.65 in total).
Digital discography sale begins Friday and ends Thursday, October 8th.
Chad VanGaalen’s Lost Harmonies is a b-sides compilation of songs that were intended to be part of a synth-focused record called Lost Harmony. VanGaalen says of the project, “They were all improvised live and recorded them — quick and dirty. I was always critical of the way my voice still sounded like my normal voice, and the album got shelved. Eventually I returned to it and tried manipulating the sounds using pitch-shifting and changing tape speeds. I finally felt like it was cool to drool, and it evolved into Lost Harmonies. These are the kind of songs I make to entertain myself late at night.”
Pay what you want for the compilation on Friday, $1 per track after.
Don’t Shy Away will be out worldwide October 23rd from Sub Pop.
Loma (Emily Cross, Dan Duszynski, and Jonathan Meiburg) has delivered two new official videos from Don’t Shy Away, their forthcoming longplayer. The aerial shot for melancholic new single “Don’t Shy Away” (the title track) was filmed, directed and edited by Duszynski, while the hypnotic, introspective album opener “I Fix My Gaze” was filmed, directed, and edited by Cross.
Duszynski says of the video for “Don’t Shy Away”: “I knew I wanted a single shot with a gradual reveal to complement the slower enveloping mood of the song. The time-stopping effect draws me in without distracting from the music. I also love Jonathan and the dogs’ cameos.”
Cross offers this on “I Fix My Gaze”: “I wanted to convey the feeling of being free even within a walled-in space. Recognizing that you’re trapped, in a way, but that there is still beauty and joy to be found.”
Meiburg says: “The video for ‘Don’t Shy Away’ was pure serendipity. So many things happen in it—the dogs, the birds, the timing—that could never be replicated, even if we tried. And I love Emily’s vision for ‘I Fix My Gaze.’ Emily was a visual artist before she was a musician, and it comes through in everything she does.”
The Malick-esque visuals were filmed in Texas (“Don’t Shy Away”) and Arizona (“I Fix My Gaze”).
Don’t Shy Away will be available on CD/LP/CS/DL October 23rd, 2020 worldwide through Sub Pop. Preorders of Don’t Shy Away are now available from Sub Pop. LP preorders through megamart.subpop.com, and select independent retailers in North America will receive the album on translucent yellow vinyl. Meanwhile, LP preorders in the U.K. and Europe through select independent retailers will receive the album on dark green vinyl.
What “The People” are saying about Loma: “Atmospheric melodies and Cross’ otherworldly vocals blend to absorbing effect…” [Don’t Shy Away, 8/10] - Uncut
“Loma are making some gorgeous, otherworldly music.” [“Half Silences”] - Stereogum
“Cherish their return, it’s a triumph” [“Ocotillo”] - For The Rabbits
“Cross’ vocals are heaven-sent” [“Ocotillo”] - Beats Per Minute
