Loma - Ocotillo

From "Don't Shy Away," out 10/23/2020

First, why start with Loma? At my old newspaper, I got to talk to Emily Cross, whose vocals merge her solo atmospheric work (Cross Record) with that of drummer/producer Dan Duszynski (her ex-husband) and Shearwater’s Jonathan Meiburg, creating a record of happy accidents and complex ruminations. It was the kind of interview that deepens your love for the creative process and for understanding people. (Asked if there was something she wished we had discussed, Cross mentioned her work as a “death doula,” a fascinating thing to briefly explore, considering she had given me a ton of time on other topics.)

Two and a half years after releasing their self-titled debut, the band will be releasing Don’t Shy Away. Once again, the album was produced at Duszynski’s studio in Dripping Springs, Texas, and is defined by Cross’s slowed-down vocals, Meiburg’s lyrics, and the band’s democratic approach to songcraft. So far, Loma has posted two tracks: “Half Silences,” tweaked from its 2019 form, and the new “Ocotillo.”

In dry times, ocotillos, “little torch” in Spanish, “look like a bunch of spiny crooked dead sticks” reaching for the skies of the American Southwest. With rain (“roll me down the center line,” as Cross sings), they sprout short leaves and red flowers that attract hummingbirds. In the impressionistic lyrics of “Ocotillo,” the plant sits next to the creosote bush, another desert dweller that survives with the same technique, creating an “island of fertility” for other living things.

Like a tumbleweed, the song and narrator take off with a “big wind” and the words “all my ties are broken; I’m in wonderful disarray.” The next 2½ minutes feature a bit of everything that has gone into Loma: Meiburg’s clanging guitar work, evocative of Talk Talk, and his studies of Berlin-era David Bowie; Cross’s clarinet and knack for otherworldliness; Duszynski’s anchor while the band squeezes a vast desert into a wall of pummeling horns. Released as America continues to grapple with a deadly pandemic, “Ocotillo” speaks to our search for meaning within nature and ourselves in spite of the crushing isolation and anxiety of 2020.