Sydney’s Loose Fit release their highly anticipated, self-titled debut EP and it’s a welcoming into a world of well-fashioned discord.
An introduction to a whole new wave of creation, ‘Loose Fit’ is an eye-opener for the cooped-up surrealists who aren’t strangers to subconscious desires of picking up the groove. Spiralling deep between the canalled cracks of observation and hyper-realism, there’s five tracks of passionate demand to full-body let loose to; as if we’re all trying to dance the tango, whilst standing on each other’s feet.
Opening scrawler Pull The Lever is a plucky figure destined to paint ‘life as an endless series of risky gambles’. Like an internal exuberance pump, it works to circulate alongside the groups now distinctive, bass elasticity; the kind which reverbs with the same captivating delight, as a child discovering the fuzzed joys of pinging the end of a ruler pressed flat against the edge of a classroom table. “It’s time to start again” – yet the change is so unpredictable, refuse to blink and you’d still not be able to picture the turns unfurling ahead.
You know that back-of-your-mind unease only ever experienced when lying in bed? The conviction you’ve not screwed the tap tight enough and knowing that no matter how comfortable you may be, wrapped up tightly in your home comfort safety-blanket – only dragging yourself out of the known and into the wide-open darkness will help the soul rest-easy. That’s essentially how the EP plays out.
Nightmarish, totally attention-seeking and not one bit “tepid” despite its emphasis on such, at no stage of a two-minute charge like ‘Riot’ does it show signs of pulling the plug. Wake up to reality, it’s times like this which keeps the spirit alive.
There is a hum, a foghorn-ed fury we’ve all tuned in to appreciate ever since Black Country New Road decided screech-sax is where shit’s hot again. Unconditionally untameable, with knotted sensory blaring ‘find-your-rhythm’ complexities, like trying to pull a fine-tooth comb through tangles of thickly matted hair, as soon as this is stuck in your head there really is no going back. As Anna Langdon splits breath between woodwind and vocal duties on Reflux, it’s only about time before someone, something snaps – you’ve been warned, likelihood is it won’t be this lot stopping anytime soon.
This is sludgy, disarming and impossible to fully grasp hold of, it sweats straight through before anyone’s even had the chance to re-emerge above the surface.
To end an EP on a track that champions tin like a cheerleader pep-rally for Cybermen and art-punk misfits, for any other group that would be a brave statement. For Loose Fit however, never losing sight of the idea that music is as much to be challenged as it is to be moveable is the underlying motive and that’s what makes the trip all the more worthwhile.
