Loon Town 
Slow Space 

Slow Space floats between euphoria and heartbreak with airy guitars and starry synths.

With their sophomore album, Slow Space, Loon Town explores liminal moments between lovers, those spaces open for change, for better or for worse. It makes sense that a band which says it’s “from somewhere between Montreal, Whitehorse and Kitchener” is making music that bounces between laughter and heartbreak, from chill synths and plucky guitars to cigarette-hazy acoustics.

The album’s single, “Party at the Ice Cream Shoppe”, showcases the band’s penchant for sensual goofiness, pairing “caramel sorbet,” “minty mocha,” and “strawberry flambe” in the chorus with a purring bass line, reverb-soaked guitars, and a synth line reminiscent of the sound of a saliva-inducing ice-cream truck. Later, Loon Town bursts glittering synthesizers on “Nomenclature,” a track hovering in the moments when lovers must tell each other what they need, to teach the words to use as they “struggle with words and names / wanting to be seen even through the pain”. The band takes this tension between wanting to help and not knowing how and coats it with constellations of dreamy synths and soothing vocals. “Great Sorrows” swerves into a room with just an acoustic guitar, where the listener sits with ghosts—unwelcome memories of those lost. Loon Town grounds their liminal explorations here, in the quiet where past and present blend. A steady drumbeat halfway through escorts the listener into their future, accompanied by phantoms and a piano’s shoulder to cry on.

On Slow Space, Loon Town draws an emotional map from first bashful hellos to heartbreaking goodbyes, between euphoria and numbness. Their music lives in those moments where you stop to think, “I’m in love,” “I’ve lost him,” or “she totally understands me,” feelings fraught with uncertainty and yet ripe with possibility. The sounds here well up the past and try to divine the future while we can enjoy the present’s vibrations.