The members of Loving bonded during summers spent planting trees in the Canadian wilderness, giving them an origin story like Vampire Weekend meeting at Columbia or Justin Vernon retreating to a Wisconsin cabin to make For Emma, Forever Ago: it’s so vivid you can imagine the band’s music without hearing a single note. For the British Columbia trio, that means simple, sun-dappled folk-pop, like Whitney after a thimbleful of magic mushrooms. Their full-length debut If I Am Only My Thoughts radiates approachability. It’s easy to imagine these songs beaming from a covered porch or a bandstand in your local park, brought to life by the scruffy guys who tend bar around the corner.
After stumbling into a large online fanbase with an EP that collected little more than polished demos, David Parry and Jesse Henderson — the band’s third member is Henderson’s brother, Lucas — retreated to tiny Gabriola Island to write, setting up a recording studio in a home that had belonged to the Hendersons’ late grandmother. It’s hard to imagine a more idyllic setting in which to make music. The British Columbia seaside is as temperate as Canada gets, with towering evergreen forests edging up to serene beaches and sandstone sculptures, and If I Am Only My Thoughts reflects that beauty through its clean, gentle melodies and lack of clutter. The album also radiates a charming spontaneity, a benefit of the band’s decision to record to tape without a great deal of editing or looping; when “A Mirror for Two Voices” begins with a false start and a quick count into its fingerpicked intro, the band feels close enough to touch.
There are moments when it feels like Loving might be capable of offering more than pleasantries. Opener “Visions” is the band’s sturdiest composition, with a slippery structure and an arrangement that slowly adds layers: snappy drums, a glowing Wurlitzer, plush piano chords, liquid guitar leads. (It also features the album’s most compelling lyrics, including a first verse full of clear, definitive images that sounds like an inversion of Big Thief’s “Not.”) The title track begins with sleepy tambourine and twinkling melodies; when the drums finally kick in after a minute, it feels like throwing open barn doors to flood a space with light. And the meditative “Only She Knows” coasts through its final minute on a series of rippling riffs that crest and recede like deep breaths.
All of these highlights feature a moment in which a song’s essence snaps into focus. In many other spots, however, the music simply lacks urgency. There’s no tension simmering beneath the placid surface, no friction to make the compositions stick. The vocals are invariably heavy-lidded and stick to a narrow range, with no harmonies in sight; closing passages meander without introducing new ideas or cutting loose; the lyrics strike a yearning, inquisitive note but mostly settle into existential word salad. Female companions are mentioned every once in a while, formless as ghosts: “You’re standing in the mirror, I’m watching you get dressed,” murmurs Henderson on “A Mirror for Two Voices.” “Your voice is soft and certain as you fumble with the buttons on your chest.”
The result is never less than amiable, but it also tends to slide past, like a pleasant daydream or an afternoon shadow. No one is demanding that Parry and the Henderson brothers demonstrate more ambition than that, but there’s enough here to justify digging deeper. If this album represents their first attempt to move beyond demos, then Loving’s next challenge is to add some substance.
