Brooke Manning is impossibly sweet. She plays under the name LOOM, the kind of name that hums when spoken. To 'loom' is a threat; something frightening and ominously close. However, Brooke is a delicate breeze, a girl with small hands and a soft voice. She arrived in the park with a guitar and a Sanza and began strumming nervously to a modest crowd of young folks shielding what remained of the sun from their eyes. Bellwoods park is something of a sacred space for heavy-hearted girls to sing their siren songs. Her music is gracefully sad; as she orchestrates dreamy experimental folk she sheds herself inside, swaying her red bangs accordingly.

  With a child's voice, she can be likened to acts like Memoryhouse or Ohbijou, with the same knack for youthful wisdom as Southern belle, Jessica Lea Mayfield. She sang indecipherably quiet, opening with a song called 'Grown' a spooky with shifting rhythms that felt cyclical and mesmerizing. She tinkered at her Sanza for another song, with a certain playfulness she arrested on-lookers to stay a while. LOOM, however small, has a magnetic presence that reaches beyond herself and speaks a certain heartache that we all share. She ended her session by breaking into a tamed laughter to excuse her shyness, which made us all fall in love with her more.

view LOOMS other songs below