Track By Track: Loomer

Ahead of a vinyl reissue with new cover art, singer-guitarist-keyboardist BREA STANBRIDGE and drummer LEE PARKER of Loomer revisit the defunct Brisbane quartet’s only album, 2010’s ‘Ceiling’. Members of Loomer now play in Spite House, Eastlink, Per Purpose, Loose Grip and more.

[Historical image is withheld pending rights review.]

‘Ceiling’

Brea: The lyrical content came from the aftermath of a wild night. I was lying on my bed and my brain was foggy. I envisioned things on the ceiling that were both beautiful and sinister.

“I feel cold in here, millions of spots appear, off the ceiling”

Lee: Has there been a single press release from ‘Brisbane’s contemporary underground’ that doesn’t bang on about being ‘oppressed by the heat’? This song was recorded in the barren, decrepit, middle-to-upper-class suburb of Taringa, by a horrible gentleman named Cameron Smith. Though it was extremely sweaty in his basement studio, honestly. It was hard to keep a hold of the sticks at times. Pat [Wright, bassist] had a penchant for Krautrock that may have been the basis for this song, but ‘Ceiling’ isn’t as sophisticated as that may imply. It’s pretty minimal and has guitar parts that trail off into reverbed space.

‘Enchanted’

Brea: ‘Enchanted’ is a sludgy number. At the time we wrote it, I remember listening to a lot of Slint. I was really loving ’90s grunge (still do) and I think it’s obvious that it had some play in this song. The words are about temptation and its effects on a relationship.

“Enchanted faces rip us apart”

Lee: I disagree that the song is ‘sludgy’ in style but it certainly sounds like we’re crawling through molasses while playing it. It feels almost artificially slow-motion to me. Luke [Walsh, mixing engineer and Blank Realm guitarist] did a good job on making the song crack open during the loud sections. We were satisfied.

‘Ride’

Brea: The words sprang from the angst of being deceived and manipulated, being weak and being controlled by someone else.

“Wind blows the glass of wine”

Lee: Jarring changes in ambience, turbulent to calm and back again. The prickly harmonics in the quiet sections always seemed like a Sonic Youth ‘Beauty Lies in the Eye’ kind of thing.

‘French’

Brea: ‘French’ is one of my favourite songs – lots of dissonant, high-pitched sounds. It was really just us having a little jam and it turned out [well]. Harry used this weird box [Yamaha FX500 rack unit] with reverse reverb that created these weird, fucked-up noises. The last section of the song is uplifting; this band needed some sort of light at the end of tunnel.

“Oliver, you weep and call need, then no response”

Lee: A long song that I suspect we would unanimously regard as the flagship of our set. The ending builds to a fantastic gimmick that we didn’t even pull off on the recorded take.

‘BBQ’

Brea: Whammy bar time, distortion, delay – that’s the guitar part from my point. Pat went for a Suicide kind of bass line. This song is an expression of guilt.

“Eye to eye deny, all this guilt is breeding in me.”

Lee: Could’ve done with a better title, a non-working-title, perhaps. There are some pleasing guitar noises in this one … metal slides on strings, playing behind the bridge, sickly reverb/delay mutations.

‘Saving Daylight’

Brea: This song is about a guy I was really in to. He was older and lived in Victoria. We played a few shows together and we instantly hit it off, but we had both just come out of relationships and were trainwrecks; more so him. The words are based on the experience of taking a train to the beach during a summer visit and drinking the entire day.

“The sun leaves later, giving me time, infecting”

Lee: It has a momentum that sets it apart from the more languid tracks on the album. Maybe the only noticeably punk-influenced track here. I would venture to say that it almost has some immediate pop hooks, too. After writing the guitar part I realised it bore a striking similarity to the ‘middle eight’ in a favourite song by an American ’80s punk band. If you ever figure it out, let me know.

‘Audition’

Brea: Here I think we were trying to be tricky, or something. It was a song for Harry [Byrne, guitarist] and I to create noises, experiment with our guitars and keep it free and uninhibited. The words are just a vessel for melody – there’s no real meaning to them.

“No coward, no soul, hard fixer, audition”

Lee: A slow-burner that moves from section to section without revisiting any. It starts optimistic and ends in a hole, with a slow descent occupying the time in between.

‘Bolt’

Brea: ‘Bolt’ was my favourite to play live I used a Roland Juno G to get that crunchy noise running through it. The big drums and Harry’s guitar part created the space we wanted for this song. Definitely sounds a bit like ‘post-rock’, which is how we were categorised early on. The lyrics are about a housemate who never shut their window. It was really fucking frustrating ’cause I was paranoid that my stuff would get stolen.

“Keep closed, the window”

Lee: This is by far the oldest song in the set and the only one written prior to Pat joining the band. I think he hated playing it! It does have a vestige of the dreaded ‘post-rock’. I always liked Harry’s opening guitar part and to me it evokes something a little cinematic … a symptom endemic to those enthusiasts of the ‘post-rock’. I think it only works as the last song on the album, so it’s best to stop streaming it and listen to one of the others.

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‘Ceiling’ is out May 30 digitally and on limited 100-run vinyl through Lost Race. It originally came out on CD through Bon Voyage.