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I
gave this one a
few chances to sip through my conscious, but it didn’t. I tried
to be open but in the end Loom’s violin lead emo punk only
annoyed me. To an extent I wanted to like it, because that is
how I start writing all reviews, from a positive standpoint, but
to no avail through repeated spins and different moods, the
five-songer Angler simply did not cut it. I like the
cover artwork and that’s about it. I think it was the prominent
use of violin which in the end totally turned me off. It gave
Loom this quasi romantic side which crashed head on with the
communal vocal approach of four members and with the upbeat
drumming of Jarom Bischoff and the sometimes angular riffage
sometimes strummed playing of Mike Cundick. The main problem
and outstanding feature of the band is clear; this Salt Lake
City combo seems to have found a unique formula with the violin
player (didn’t that fucking horrible band Yellowcard used one
too?), but the music of Loom is as shown here not a great
conduit for pathos or melancholy; and the violin as played by
Kim Pack seems embellished in sadness and a sense of profundity
that Loom’s rock lacks.
So we have two
good separate things going here instead of one unique formula;
and the sad part is that each works well on its own but that
together the mixture works as well as water and oil. “Tracers”
is almost an exception, where the interplay between both rock
and violin help each other, but this is the exception rather
than the rule and all in all and in retrospect it is not that
great anyway. More so, the best thing about it are the first
vocal lines dropped by only one member instead of the
distracting communal approach. There are ways to go here and
either Loom needs to work at perfecting their approach or I need
to start thinking that violinists rock. My issues were clear;
the communal vocals do little to spew sentiments focusing
instead on simply delivering flatlines and the combination of
rock and violin is unsure and uncertain. Perhaps, standing in
middle ground would do Loom well.
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