Loma (Emily Cross, Dan Duszynski, Jonathan Meiburg) have announced details of their third album How Will I Live Without A Body? out on Sub Pop on the 28th of June. Described as “a unique, and oddly comforting album about partnership, loss, regeneration, and fighting the feeling that we’re all in this alone.” Along with the announcement they have shared the haunting first single with its enveloping piano motifs, shifting atmospheres and the touching vocals of Emily Cross, watch the accompanying official video, directed by and starring Cross here.
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.
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. “Sitting in our heavy coats around a little electric radiator, we realised how much we’d missed each other—and that just being together was precious”, recalls Meiburg.
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.
Loma’s previous album, Don’t Shy Away, was galvanised 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”.
How Will I Live Without A Body? is available to preorder on CD/LP/digitally worldwide from Sub Pop. 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.
Photo credit: Emily Cross
