Sheila, the bassist in Seattle four-piece No Floor, sings lead for the first time on “Loop,” and the lyric the band wrote together keeps postponing itself. The song pulls apart two things that usually travel as a pair: being able to do something and being willing to.
The first verse lays out its terms like a contract with no start date: “When I can, I will / And I won’t, until.” The missing condition turns out to be feeling better, and proof will come whenever it comes. Every clause waits on another clause. The second verse owns up to the cost, a promise to act stupid and feel awful in the meantime, and both verses land on the same defense, that the singer cares. The only concrete plan in the whole song is the chorus, a flat admission of needing sleep.
Sleep is a fitting fix for a circular argument, since it’s also where every day resets and the loop starts over. The music runs on that principle. One guitar figure repeats and swells under heavy distortion and chorus, the pedal effect that stacks slightly detuned copies of a signal so a single guitar sounds like several. Harmonic leads and small bass runs add detail at the edges, and instrumental breaks keep pulling the pop structure apart before it settles.
No Floor wrote a song about the gap between can and will, then handed it to a bassist stepping up to the microphone for the first time, someone who plainly could and did.
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