Song, by Toad

This article is very, very long – I’m warning you now. I was trying to cut it down, and eventually just thought fuck it, I don’t have an editor, why not leave it all up there, so I have. There’s a page break though, to stop it eating my entire front page, so if you want to read the whole thing then you’ll have to use the ‘Read More’ link thingy down near the bottom. I’ve also popped in some interview and live footage as well, although the audio on the interview is dreadful, because we couldn’t find a quiet enough spot. I bet the fucking BBC never has to put up with this sort of shit.

Anyway, when you first see Ritchie Young, live, whispering his way through the more delicate parts of Loch Lomond’s material you really worry that he’s going to have the strength in his lungs to force out the rest of the song. It even occurs that he might just apologise, cough weakly and slink off stage in terror. The first time I saw the band perform this weekend they were on the main stage in the midst of a general PA failure, and playing entirely without the benefit of microphones. I’ll be honest, I feared for him.

Then something strange happens. Loch Lomond songs tend to tiptoe along, taking stock of the ground on which they find themselves, before suddenly growing and becoming a bigger, more forceful beast altogether. The do this out of nowhere, too, much like an unassuming lizard that suddenly rears its head, bares its teeth and unfolds a brightly coloured ruff. It’s not terrifying and aggressive exactly, but it is clearly not the meek and defenceless creature you casually mistook it for. Similarly Ritchie will look almost timid and, unamplified, the seemingly disconnected meanderings of the band can sound entirely lost until suddenly, it all changes. The stray strands of instrumental come together to form a coherent swirl of sound, the volume and force of the song elevate noticably and suddenly Ritchie’s voice reveals several new gears. A pained whisper, or a delicate one, breaks out into accusatory wail, like he was suddenly using all of his lungs to push it out instead of just the air in a single breath. The song, put simply, suddenly gets big.

Later that day, after another series of technical disasters we also see them play a fully plugged-in set in the Galaxy Barn. This time, one vocal mic aside, there are no hitches during the set itself and we are treated to Loch Lomond in full flow. With microphones it is possible to piece together the early musical fragments, and to discern the eddies that will later twist together to form the cyclone of the song. Then when it begins, when all the vocals build together, when Ritchie’s voice goes from whisper to wail, the impact is impressive.
There is a prettiness about a lot of Loch Lomond’s music, but there’s still something bigger, more forceful, simmering below the surface. There is something very orchestral about this kind of construction, which may stem from the background of most of the musicians.

“I usually write the basic structure of the song and the way I think about it is that I’m right handed and I sketch out this thing kind of sloppily – kind of a structure. When I bring it to the band I have no clue what chords I’m playing, I have no musical background, I have no classical training like the rest of the band. And I take this drunk third-grader drawing to these guys and when I get it back it’s beautiful, and I love these guys for that.”

Throughout the interview in fact this seems to be Ritchie’s approach. Very self-deprecating, happy not to speak too much, quiet and if not shy, then not demanding either. It is left to Scott, the band’s clarinet player and percussionist to flesh out a lot of the discussions:

“Actually I have more jazz training,” he says “but Ritchie’s just very complimentary when he says these things. I would not consider myself classically trained at all. Amanda is a Suzuki trained viola player, Dave Depper is just a god-given virtuoso, from the day he was born he was just given a talent. Ritchie’s a far better musician than he gives himself credit for.”

Ritchie seems entirely happy to let him do most of the talking. Actually I would go so far as to say that he just seems to enjoy the fact that Scott seems so passionate and content playing in a band that started out as a solo project.

“I had friends that would come in and play different things. It’s like one of those things where your friend that’s in five different bands comes in and learns all the parts and then has to go off on tour. Then about two years ago we decided to become a band and not just my solo project.”

But the way the band actually bring their songs together from Ritchie’s initial drunk third-grader sketches reinforces the impression of someone who is happy to let things develop organically, and not to try and keep ownership of the music clutched close to his chest. Scott describes their rehearsals, in which the bones of the songs are fleshed out:

“Well, we work in fits and starts, a little bit here and a little bit there. It’s like a conversation, you know, sometimes it’s a really good one and that’s because everyone’s having input. But everyone seems to hear what they want to play right away. Because we’re multi-instrumentalists, well from my point of view I’ll figure out whether I want to play clarinet or drums sometimes in a matter of seconds. But sometimes I’ll say, ‘Yeah I’m thinking of playing bass clarient’ and our bass player will say ‘Well I think this song should have drums’ then I’ll say ‘Okay I’ll try both’ and so our egos are always in check with how we make sugestions to other people. Ritchie’s the same way with the songs, where we can make suggestions for changing the form. Not only adding our own arrangements, but saying that maybe we should have this verse stretch out, or make up our own ending. I think I’m having a hard time putting a point to it, because it’s a very liquid thing – we’re still discovering how we work as a band.”

For a group with an EP and an album behind them it seems strange to think that they are still finding their way in some senses, but if you have that many people in a band capable of making a contribution, then I suppose having an inflexible way of approaching things probably wouldn’t work at all. That said, I have yet to meet a leader of a successful band who wasn’t in some way a control freak, and didn’t have some strong underlying ambition. You can see glimpses of that occasionally with Loch Lomond, particularly when Scott explains the manner in which he joined the band, bringing a full drum kit with him, and the way in which his setup changed.

“Apparently there was some sort of coup that happened where the band had decided that my drum setup was going to change without really telling me, and they all went to the captain of the boat and said ‘Here’s how it’s going to go down’. And Ritchie in his really great way of communicating things called me and said ‘Let’s try something different tonight, you know, just bring a floor tom and a snare drum.’ I forget exactly, but it was a really kind deceit basically. He made it seem like it was only his decision, he sort of took the heat and I was fine with that. And then it became more of a signature way of playing percussion. And one that I now feel is part of the originality of the band, and we’ll probably never go back to a traditional drum kit again.”

So for all he seems happy to let the band as a whole navigate their own course, there are glimpses that underneath it all, Ritchie still has the inclination to step in and take the tiller when he feels it’s really needed. The Portland music scene seems to be an incredibly supportive and an incredibly nurturing one, and it seems in many ways the perfect place for a group like this to sprout. There’s just no hard, mean edge to be found in them at all – not that I am looking for it, but that edge is usually somewhere in a band, particularly the more successful ones. Indeed, their take on the scene at home seems to reinforce this impression:

“It feels very warm and good to be on the inside of it right now” says Ritchie. “Musically it’s very incestuous, we play with each other, we share musicians. There’s no massive amount of ego, and if there are then they’re kind of pushed to the side. So for the most part everyone’s very kind to one another, and open to sharing musicians and working out touring schedules and practise schedules.”

“We’re older and we don’t have drug problems” puts in Scott, mischeviously. “The Portland music scene is about being healthy, not in like a health freak kind of way, but with music being the driving force and not the lifestyle, and I think that draws a certain calibre of musician. We’ve got all our craziness out and now we’re ready to make a career.”

And herein lies the rub. To make a career you have to have ambition, and in many ways you have to have a bit of a mean streak, and I wonder if this group of lovely people has that in them. For starters, incessant touring is not much fun, and it puts a lot of pressure on the social structure of a group, and with seven people that could be complicated. It’s also exhausting, and potentially demoralising, and involves stepping out of the safe harbour of a supportive local scene and facing the music, so to speak. Given Portland’s recent history, Ritchie says that this is now seen as more of a natural next step than you might think:

“The local scene expects us to do that. If we played three times a week they would be like ‘just get out there and do it’. Portland’s a wonderful training ground to sharpen your sword, and everyone expects you to go out with that and spread the good word.”

Awareness nationwide and, eventually, abroad have been moving slowly thus far, but Scott thinks this is probably due to their relatively light tour schedules, and this is something that they are looking to change over the next couple of years in an effort to make their mark on a greater audience.

“That’s the goal now, to be a touring band. Because that’s the indication that you have a music career is if you’re driving around and playing a lot of shows.

“The opening slot at a small club is the same as being a headliner, because everyone’s in close proximity where if they like you then you can maybe control a room of people and have them listen to you. But the audiences that we might play in front of might be I don’t know, like five thousand or more or something, and we’ve never done anything like that. And I don’t know what it’s like to be a support band for that, they could just be in their minds ‘We’re waiting to see who we wanted to come here for, we’re not going to listen to you’ or they could be just like ‘Ah, wow, this is cool, I’m going to listen to this’ but I have no idea what that’s going to be like.”

So whether or not the band have the drive and the endurance to become a national, or hopefully even a global concern, is something that we will discover over the next couple of years, because they have well and truly set sail from their comfort zone, the momentum is behind them, and they are about to play to some very big audiences.

Do I personally think they have the ability to take this opportunity to break out and establish themselves on a wider stage? Well yes, I think they do. And partly this is related to the same softly guided, organic process that has built the group they are today. Listening to Ritchie describe why he doesn’t write songs with a more traditional, linear narrative gives some hints as to why, if you ask me:

“Oh yeah, I’m no good at writing those sorts of songs. I don’t try to write love songs. Love is the last thing on my mind, so many people do it so well, that I don’t even want to try and mess with that. Sometimes I feel insecure like all of us do, and sometimes I feel like just fuck that, I’m just going to do it and I don’t care. Those are the times that I grab my guitar and write down the lyrics or whatever I’m feeling or the dream that I’m having and I really try not to second-guess it because to second-guess it might ruin it, you know?

“I think what we try to do dynamically is just build around the emotion of what’s going on when we’re writing it, and we try not to mess with it too much. Most of our songs have like three chords, maybe two, sometimes four if we get crazy. I think what we try to do is capture the emotion of writing the song, and maybe base it off the lyrics or what’s going on at the time, and then we try not to second-guess that, try not to add too many bridges, try not to complicate things with like the math of songwriting. We’re way more turned on by the dynamics of a song than how complicated a song is.”

It’s that capacity to follow their instincts, not to over-think, and not to second-guess themselves which, assuming they can keep it intact, could well take this band on to the bigger things for which they are currently aiming. Seeing them play live, and two such different sets, I realise I had allowed myself to forget just how good their music is. There is real life there, and the way the band builds and brings together the songs, and the way they manage to seem like they’re off on their own individual digressions, before suddenly, unexpectedly bringing it all together into a great crescendo gives me confidence that they really can do it. The songs, undoubtedly, are good enough and that gives them the best possible platform. The rest is down to how they handle it as a group, how well their personal dynamic holds up in the pretty considerable change in environment they are about to experience.

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Loch Lomond – Tic
Loch Lomond – Song in ¾

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