Listening to a Mary Lattimore album is like flipping by way of a scrapbook stuffed with yellowing images. For the Los Angeles-based harpist, no second is just too trivial to seize in music: the lone deer she noticed within the woods throughout a residency keep, the Wawa from a street journey. On albums like 2017’s Collected Items and 2020’s Silver Ladders she codified her fashion, reworking tales from her travels into wistful odes meant to evoke the sensation of a resurfaced reminiscence. With Goodbye, Lodge Arkada, she invitations an array of collaborators to assist craft pensive songs that develop out of moments previous. Whereas her instrument’s luminous tone stays the music’s defining attribute, she embraces a darker temper than earlier than.
Goodbye, Lodge Arkada takes its identify from a previously grand lodge on the Croatian island of Hvar the place Lattimore as soon as roamed the empty hallways, imagining the majesty of its glory days. She later realized from a buddy that the place had been gutted and modernized, and the information prompted this album-length tribute to light grace. Not all her inspirations are as somber as her typically stately music would possibly recommend, nonetheless: “And Then He Wrapped His Wings Round Me” was impressed by a childhood encounter with an actor in a life-sized Massive Fowl costume, whereas “Music for Making use of Shimmering Eye Shadow,” which she wrote as pre-show music for green-room rituals, grew out of an investigation within the theoretical sound of house.
Regardless of the vary of her inspirations, Lattimore’s music is uniformly moody and barely ambiguous. She performs at a leisurely tempo and cloaks every pluck in reverb, giving the sensation that her music is floating. Her melodies typically favor the excessive, twinkling pitches of her instrument; they sway quite than leap, transmitting a sense of reverence. And as they repeat, they increase, crescendoing with every reiteration. On “Arrivederci,” which Lattimore wrote after being fired from a gig, former Remedy keyboardist Lol Tolhurst’s synths add murkiness, bass notes swelling beneath Lattimore’s sluggish lament. The lilting phrases of nearer “Yesterday’s Events” really feel dreamy at first, however because the music grows, Samara Lubelski’s flickering violin riffs minimize throughout ethereal vocals from Slowdive’s Rachel Goswell, stirring somewhat little bit of chaos into the soothing lullaby.
But even in moments the place a melody turns into turbulent, Lattimore’s compositions can really feel relentlessly fairly. Her music avoids dysfunction; she fastidiously weaves candy passages collectively and all the time ends with an upbeat tone. However with “Blender in a Blender,” Lattimore permits for some frayed edges. When writing the monitor, she recalled a dialog during which she and a buddy puzzled what kinds of bodily objects may very well be put in a blender. Glow sticks, iPhones; might even a blender be blended? Her harp feels its featheriest right here, hovering above Roy Montgomery’s hazy guitar. However then, after a second of silence, Montgomery’s guitar returns with pressure, churning in a distorted blur. It’s a refreshing reminder that regardless of her music’s nostalgic forged, it doesn’t need to be slowed down by it. It might probably make room for humor, too.
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