A Look into Loophole and Their Debut LP "Matter of Fact"

A significant change in theme and sound can be a make-or-break moment for even the most successful bands. Loophole, a band from the LA area, is a prime example of how to do it right and show that an evolution is always possible. Made up of just three people —Dan on guitar and vocals, Alex on the bass, and Harry on drums — Loophole recently released their first LP, and it is one for the books. Their previous EP, released in 2023, Please Stop Talking, showed the immense capability of the band and was a short but sweet ode to indie rock. With this new album, Matter of Fact, the vibes got a whole lot darker and the music heavier. If you had the pleasure of seeing them live in SLO a while back, then you know that this mood alteration was not made at the sacrifice of tight instrumentals nor a performance that brings the energy to everyone in the room. I had the opportunity to speak with the band about their origins and what went into this new album. Here is some of that conversation:

Q: How has being from LA shaped the band's sound and development?

Dan: There is a ton of competition here, and a lot of our friends are putting stuff out all the time, and we’re lucky to be in a really creative place because it pushes us to meet at least once a week, and just always trying to throw shit at the wall and see what sticks.

Harry: We all grew up here. Daniel lived down the street from me in middle school, Alex lived right next to the high school I went to, and we all knew the people playing and putting on backyard shows in high school, so it all felt super organic.

Alex: This is a true grass-fed band.

Harry: I think it’s grass-roots.

Alex: No, grass-fed, like grass-fed beef.

Dan: We don’t eat fucking corn.

Q: Do you feel like all growing up in the same area has given you guys an edge or made working together in the band easier and more cohesive?

Harry: Daniel and I played together in middle school and that was some of our first experiences playing music with other people, all in Daniel's garage and then I went to a different high school where I met Alex, and then he and I started playing in garages, just doing covers of all the stuff we loved from Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath to The Strokes and Arctic Monkeys.

Dan: Yeah, it has felt like we don’t have to go through that process of getting to know each other. In other bands I have been in, you all have to start out feeling like strangers, and while you do quickly get to know each other, you still can feel that you’re from different places. So being from the same area now, having similar experiences, and even growing up listening to a lot of the same things, all make it easier to relate to each other.

Q: Was there one person who really pulled the trigger and said lets do this, let's make Loophole happen?

Alex: Dan had posted, I think in January of 2023, ‘Looking for a bass player and drummer to jam with,’ and the first band I had been in had just slowly dissolved with the pandemic. I felt like I couldn’t just move on, I needed to figure out how to get a band together, so when Dan put that out, I was like ‘oh, I wouldn’t mind jamming with Dan’ and ‘oh, Harry plays drums too’. So I told Dan if he could get Harry to play drums with us, then I’ll jam with you, produce, do whatever, but Dan said he already asked Harry and he’d said no. So I said ok, I’m gonna talk to Harry, we can meet at the little lockout studio I had gotten from my first band, and sure enough, we built our own church. Every Sunday.

Dan: I was living in the Pacific Northwest and was playing in a band, but with COVID, I moved back to LA. I was missing playing in a band, so I decided to put out the post. Harry was already playing in some other bands, which is probably why he said no, unless he doesn’t really like me, I don’t know.

Harry: Probably a little bit of both!

Dan: But Alex was the most motivated to round us all up.

Q: Something you guys seem to do really well is maintain a super strong stylistic and artistic direction for not just the music but also your social media, album covers, and visual media. Is that a group effort, or has it mainly been one person to really pursue that?

Alex: Now it’s pretty divided between the three of us. We will all pitch in when we know that we need that extra help. For example, I might give out an idea, but Harry will give a rebuttal, and then Dan will continue and might say, ‘I don’t know how I feel about this,’ so then I might interject again. So between the three of us, we all try to input as much as possible, and there isn’t one person who really heads it all.

Harry: It didn’t start this way, though; originally, our whole sound started much more like an indie band sort of thing, just because that is what we were all in before this. I think what the turning point for it all was that Dan had recorded a bunch of songs at home a few years ago, maybe about four or five songs that were all heavier and darker, and when we heard them, we were like, ‘Wait, this is sick, why don't we try to play some of these.’ So we did, and that led us to really workshopping and jamming to figure out the structures and revamp all the songs, making it really ours and new. Even though it’s a little of all of us, it was really Dan who led our push into the heavier direction.

Dan: After I had made those heavier, darker songs, and we realized that we really wanted to keep doing that. From there, we were all more invested, and that allowed for a lot more collaboration instead of me just sending partially finished songs; we started to just write all together when we realized ‘Oh yeah, this could be our style.’ Visually, I would say I make most of it. I make the flyers, the promotional videos, I’ll use my camcorder, and for the album art, we've used pictures I’ve already taken. For this album, though I didn't feel like any of them fit, I was going through all my archives, developed extra rolls of film to try to find something, but nothing felt quite right. We decided instead to go with an image we found that was in the public domain, and tweaked and edited it until we liked it and it felt representative of the music.

Alex: I really have always loved performing, and this has always been an escape for me. I have always said that if there is any time where I perform and I can have even ten seconds of locking eyes with someone and they're feeling the music, their head is banging, they're excited for what they're listening to, just being able to exchange those emotions just by looking at one another. That to me feels like wow, I've created a space where people can forget for a moment about what is happening outside those doors and just enjoy what is happening in front of me.

Harry: I’m probably the least performer-y of the bunch maybe, but I just really love music. I like the history of what all came before, and being able to integrate that into my own playing, and I think just the act of drumming, or playing bass or guitar, is at its heart just fun, and it's just simple to me.

Alex: Harry is too busy locking it down to be able to headbang.

Q: What have been the biggest roadblocks for making this album, whether it was creatively or logistically, and what was the process of being able to overcome those?

Alex: The biggest roadblock, I think, was the number of weddings Harry had to go to!

In reality, there was one specific night where I just said, if we’re gonna really write and record this album, what is the best way to actually do it? So I think I just started to write down calendar dates to try to start making some deadlines. We’ll have four songs done by this day, and we should do writing sessions for these days, and we should do rehearsal workshopping of only these songs on THESE days. It was probably after that show we did in SLO, we had maybe three more shows, and from there we were like, let's lock these down, make sure they feel natural and solid. 

Dan: We are a pretty structured band; we meet every Sunday at 10 in the morning. We treat Sunday as sort of sacred.

Harry: It’s church!

Dan: We don't even really go out late on Saturday because we know we're rehearsing the next day. We just want to sound super tight, and like a really solid band, and the only way to do that is to set aside a single time every week, and any additional time is great, and shows are awesome because that is just another way to practice. 

Alex: I will say it felt weird, having to think of it so scheduled, but one of my biggest goals ever has been to be able to write and record an album and release it. This was like that moment of Oh! We all have this same idea, if we don't make an effort to champion it it might not happen, so we might as well go all for it.

Dan: We also had to create a schedule cause we don’t actually record in LA. We have to travel up to Ojai, and sometimes we’ll get an Airbnb or hotel, but other times we are driving back all in the same day.

Q: Final question to wrap up now. What is each of your favorite songs off of the new album?

Harry: “Birthday Suit” for me.

Dan: “Cowboys”

Alex: Yeah, I gotta say “Cowboys” as well, for me it is such a great opener and sets the whole mood for the next 30 minutes.

Thanks again to loophole for taking the time out of their regular sacred Sunday to have such a great conversation. Make sure that you go check out their new album Matter of Fact if you haven’t already!

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Landon Morton is a writer on our Editorial Team. He conducted the interview and wrote the article. Sam Thome is our Art Director. He designed the graphic. Emilie Wilde is a Los Angeles-based photographer. She took the colored photos. Izzy Donato is also a Los Angeles-based photographer. She took the black & white photos.