Album Review: If I Am Only My Thoughts by Loving

On their first full-length album, If I Am Only My Thoughts, the Canadian trio Loving create an unbroken mood of careful tenderness and fragile beauty across slightly over a half-hour's worth of home-cooked indie pop. They never raise their voices above a whisper, the instruments are gently strummed, pressed, plucked, and struck, and the songs all hit the sweet spot in between resigned melancholy and sweet hopefulness. The group blend acoustic guitars with chorus-coated electrics, layer pianos and synths, add the occasional string section (both real and Mellotron-provided), and dial the drums way down in the mix in pursuit of a sound that's both utterly relaxed and intricate enough to hold the listener's attention at all times.

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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.

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