The Room’s “The Room” begins with guitar and drums already moving. There is weight in the opening, but nothing closed about it. When Dave Jackson’s vocal enters, it settles naturally into the same rhythm, and the song starts to feel like travelling by train through a country you have never seen before, watching new land pass outside and feeling free to keep going.
That feeling is built into the rhythm. In the more emphasized sections, the guitar reaches what sounds like the end of a chord and keeps holding while the drums count four underneath it. Then everything comes back in. The pause only lasts a few seconds, but each return feels like the song has reached another stretch of open space.
Jackson’s vocal moves easily with it. Darren Brown’s guitar keeps some roughness around the edges, Ethan Kyme’s keyboards open the track further, and Becky Stringer’s bass and Tom McCabe’s drums hold the movement underneath. Even when the guitar stays suspended, something is still carrying the song forward.
The source behind “The Room” gives that optimism an interesting edge. Jackson drew the song from Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker, specifically the Zone and the guide leading people through territory changed by something they cannot understand. The film makes unfamiliar space feel dangerous and unknowable. Here, the unknown feels exciting. Whatever is ahead seems worth seeing.
The Room formed in Liverpool in 1979, split in 1985, and returned in 2022, but “The Room” never feels caught between those two versions of the band. Their post punk sharpness is still there in the guitar and direct rhythm, but the song feels open and curious rather than retrospective.
That gives it a distinct place on Doom Pop!. Much of the album looks toward paranoia, war, authoritarianism, disinformation, horror, and the unease of modern life. “The Room” looks into unfamiliar territory and finds possibility there instead.
Recorded and mixed at Ark Recording Studios in Liverpool, the track was produced by Jackson and Steve Powell, with a video by Marco Cecere. It becomes one of Doom Pop!’s lighter moments without separating itself from the world the album is looking at.
The image that stays is simple: the guitar holds, the drums count four, everything returns, and another view appears outside the window.
“The Room” appears on Doom Pop!, out now via 9×9 Records.
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