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Mary Lattimore

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Mary Lattimore, “Goodbye, Hotel Arkada” (Ghostly International, 2023)

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This six-song album borrows its title from a beloved Croatian hotel damningly slated for modernization, which is a fitting inspiration for an album that “celebrates and mourns the tragedy and beauty of the ephemeral.” Obviously, that is an especially resonant theme these days, given the endlessly accelerating pace of change and the relentless erosion of the comforting and familiar. Lattimore has always been unusually well-attuned to such feelings, but Goodbye, Hotel Arkada is also inspired by her passions for collaboration and travel, both of which “shake loose strands of inspiration.”

In keeping with those themes, this album features a number of intriguing collaborators (Slowdive’s Rachel Goswell, The Cure’s Lol Tolhurst, etc.), as well as a number of pieces inspired by warm memories of specific places and times from her travels, tours, and childhood. In fact, this is now the second Lattimore release that alludes to the island of Hvar (the first being 2020’s landmark Silver Ladders). Naturally, the end result of all those reawakened memories and inspired collaborations is yet another gorgeous Mary Lattimore album, but it took a few listens before I fully appreciated this one’s magic, as Goodbye, Hotel Arkada often feels deceptively simple on its surface. In reality, however, these are some of Lattimore’s most focused and beautifully crafted pieces to date (they just take a little bit longer than usual to reveal their full depths).

My initial impression of this album was that it was a bit too conventionally pretty and straightforward to rank among Lattimore’s strongest work, which I now attribute to the fact that the immersive, psychedelic touches of her “effects pedal” era have been toned down a bit. I am thankfully much wiser and more perceptive now, but I never would have gotten to that place if I had not been absolutely mesmerized by “Horses, Glossy on the Hill.” That piece is an instant stone-cold classic right from the first notes, as Lattimore beautifully weaves together a bittersweet descending melody with a wooden clacking rhythm and lush Disintegration-esque synth chords. It initially has the feel of a delicate, dancing music box melody, but the deeper magic lies in the details, as Lattimore crafts a swoon-inducing dreamscape through quivering vibrato, tender melodies, lovely harmonies, subtle effects, and rippling chord sweeps. In fact, Lattimore does not miss a single trick, as even the clacking sounds have a wonderfully long and reverberant decay and the final stretch feels akin to being lovingly serenaded by an ensemble of harp-wielding celestial cherubs. Had “Horses, Glossy on the Hill” been the opener, the rest of Hotel Arkada would have had a damn-near impossible act to follow, but Lattimore wisely positioned it as a late-album climax instead. That allows the more modest and intimate remaining pieces a chance to blossom outside its long shadow, which is the sort of thoughtful sequencing that I have grown to expect and appreciate from Lattimore.

The album’s other big highlight is “Arrivederci,” which Lattimore ironically started writing after the heartbreak of being fired from a project for not playing the harp parts well enough (a wound that was later healed further by the arrival of Lol Tolhurst’s contributions on New Year’s Eve). It too has welcome hints of Disintegration-era Cure, but the deeper beauty again lies in the details, as the swaying rhythm, bleary psych touches, chiming melodies, and shimmering organ undercurrent provide a wonderful distraction as Lattimore sneakily assembles the pieces for a gorgeously intricate crescendo of interwoven melodies.

The pleasures of the remaining pieces are admittedly a bit more modest, but that does not make them any less charming or lovely–it just means that their inspirations were a bit more quiet and intimate than, say, a herd of horses or a painful rejection (for example, “Music For Applying Shimmering Eye Shadow” is exactly what it claims to be). Viewed in that light, Goodbye, Hotel Arkada is an understated masterpiece that weaves together a lifetime of sense impressions, fond memories, and lasting friendships and the album’s pleasures only deepen upon learning the stories behind each piece. As Lattimore herself puts it, the fate of Hotel Arkady awakened her to the elements “that make a place special” and she set out to memorialize those places and people that had left their mark on her own life (to “bottle” their essence, if you will). For example, “And Then He Wrapped His Wings Around Me” is a reference to the time Lattimore and her mom got to meet Big Bird after winning a childhood drawing contest, while “Yesterday’s Parties” evokes memories of late nights with friends in Brussels and “Eye Shadow” is partially inspired by learning that space allegedly smells like “walnuts and brake pads.”

In short, Lattimore distilled all of life’s rich pageant into a wonderful album, then threw Muppets and outer space onto the heap as well, which is a move that definitely would never have occurred to a lesser artist. Given that, I have no hesitation about declaring Hotel Arkada to be a remarkable piece of art, as Lattimore has managed to soulfully channel all the sadness, yearning, joy, and wonder of being alive into a movingly beautiful and bittersweet celebration of the things that matter (even if some of them only exist in memory).

Listen here.

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Mary Lattimore/Growing, “Gainer” (Self-Released, 2021)

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This lovely and unexpected collaboration was quietly released digitally in November with no background information provided at all, but it is probably safe to say that it was recorded quite recently, as it shares a lot of common ground with the radiant drones of Growing’s Diptych (2021). That, of course, also means that Gainer can sometimes feel like a welcome throwback to “classic Kranky” era drone artists like Stars of the Lid, though each piece ultimately blossoms into something more ambitious and distinctive by the end. That drone-heavy aesthetic sometimes makes figuring out where Lattimore fits in quite a challenge, as recognizable harp sounds are a bit of a rarity amidst the smoldering bass thrum and ambient shimmer. 

Then again, recognizable guitar and bass sounds are not exactly rampant either, so maybe all three artists opted for elegantly blurred impressionist abstraction. In any case, whatever they did worked quite well, as Lattimore and Growing’s two aesthetics bleed together quite nicely and often feel like something greater than the mere sum of their parts (or at least like a very good Growing album beautifully enhanced with subtle acoustic shadings and flickers of melody).

The album is divided into two longform pieces that each clock in around 16 or 17 minutes. The opening “Flowers in the Center Lane Sway” fades quietly into being with a slow melody of harmonic-like swells. Around the 2-minute mark, however, the piece unexpectedly blossoms into a far more harmonically and texturally rich chord progression. Given that this partially a Growing album, there is a healthy amount of amplifier hum and buzzing drone waves as well, which provides a pleasantly bleary and immersive backdrop for a simple, seesawing melody that evokes the faint streaks of light from the final moments of a vivid sunset. 

Occasionally, there is a hint of audible harp or the sensation of something harp-like moving amidst the hum, but Lattimore finally appears in earnest for the piece’s final third to add rippling and ephemeral arpeggios that feel like glimpses of twinkling stars in the gaps between passing clouds. As all that happens, the piece sneakily accumulates a pleasantly heaving and hypnotic pulse as well, which is a damn neat trick.

While “Flowers” is certainly a solid piece, the following “Tagada, Night Rises” is both stronger and more distinctive. Lattimore initially seems to be steering the ship for the piece, as quivering webs of arpeggios streak lazy trails across a smoldering backdrop of bass drone. Rather than feeling like it is evolving toward something larger, however, the piece lingers in a warm and glimmering dreamscape akin to a state of suspended animation (though the bass drone does seem to be stealthily building in intensity throughout the piece). “Tagada” takes a surprise detour around the halfway point though, as it feels like a menacing vibrato has curdled the bass drone and cast a shadow of uneasy dissonance across everything. 

That darkening paves the way for yet another composition trick, however, as the piece slowly brightens for a warmly lovely crescendo of woozy and quavering guitar and harp motifs before ending with unexpectedly gorgeous outro that feels like dark birds silhouetted by a deep red sunset. While I suspect both pieces will resonate more with fans of Growing’s dronier side than with Lattimore’s own fanbase, Gainer is both an impressively organic/seamless convergence of visions and a sustained, quietly beautiful reverie.

Samples can be found here.

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Mary Lattimore, “Collected Pieces II” (Ghostly International, 2021)

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I believe I first started to become beguiled with Mary Lattimore’s work with the release of 2016’s At the Dam, but the following year’s Collected Pieces definitely deepened my interest further, as it featured at least two stone-cold instant classics (and the rest of it consistently flirted with similar levels of greatness). While that first collection sets the bar intimidatingly high for this second cassette of unreleased songs, digital-only Bandcamp singles, and other stray pieces, Lattimore tends to be admirably discriminating in what she chooses to release and she has been on a bit of a compositional hot streak over the last couple years. 

Needless to say, there is plenty to enjoy here. As a whole, this second volume is probably a bit less uniformly strong than its predecessor, but it too contains a few pieces that most Lattimore fans will consider essential. Moreover, a couple of them are not included on the Collected Pieces: 2015-2020 double LP slated for release in January. As such, only casual Lattimore fans can safely pass up this stand-alone collection, as serious harp-heads will probably not want to deny themselves the pleasures of “Sleeping Deer” and “Princess Nicotine.”

There a few things that one can reliably expect from a new Mary Lattimore album: plenty of tenderly beautiful melodies, lightness of touch, and an intuitive genius for dynamics. Consequently, even the lesser pieces on Collected Pieces II are quite good, but the reason I absolutely need to hear everything that Lattimore releases is that she occasionally reaches heights of inspiration that transcend the fundamental limitations of a harp album altogether and I do not want to miss any of those moments. 

Some of those moments are a more radical departure than others though and one of the less radical ones is the album’s lead single “We Wave From Our Boats,” which dates from the earliest days of the pandemic (Lattimore found herself waving to neighbors she did not know “in a gesture of solidarity” akin to “how you’re compelled to wave at people on the other boat when you’re on a boat yourself”). Apparently, it was an improvisation, but the delicate, bittersweet melody is wonderful and I love the way the flutes add a bleary haze of unreality that slowly burns away to reveal a warm, sun-dappled crescendo. 

“For Scott Kelly, Returned to Earth” is another winning foray into expected Lattimore terrain, as layers of rippling, sweeping, and pulsing arpeggios cohere into a vibrant and twinkling web of sublime loveliness. Both pieces are wonderful, of course, but I am especially fond of two comparative outliers that found their way onto the album. The first is the previously unreleased “Sleeping Deer,” which was inspired by an orphaned deer (Lollipop) that Lattimore befriended during a residency on a Wyoming cattle ranch. Despite its adorable inspiration, it is probably the darkest piece on the album, as its tender, sadness-tinged melody is enhanced with stammering effects, backwards snarls, and pitch-bending bass drones. 

The other surprise gem is the textural tour de force of “What the Living Do,” as a simple repeating melody is processed into something glimmering and spectral that calls to mind ghosts slowly dancing in the light of a stained glass window. The album is rounded out with a pair of pieces inspired by silent films (always nice to see a Bill Morrison reference), an unexpectedly radiant breakup song, a home-recorded version of Silver Ladders‘ “Pine Trees,” and a 13-minute epic about “a Charlie Chaplin-like character who lost their glasses.” Overall, it is yet another strong batch of songs from Lattimore, reaffirming that her home recordings can be every bit as transfixing as her studio ones (even if she leaves her effects pedals largely untouched).

Samples can be found here.

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Mary Lattimore, “Collected Pieces” (Ghostly International, 2017)

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Modestly billed as a counterpart to last year’s At The Dam album, the prosaically titled Collected Pieces is quite a big and very pleasant surprise, as my expectation was that it would just be some outtakes and orphaned pieces of interest to serious fans only (an expectation that was only reinforced by the limited edition cassette format). I suppose these six pieces are technically orphans of a sort, as they never made it onto any of Lattimore’s formal albums, but it certainly was not because they were not good enough. Rather, they all just surfaced as an erratic trickle of one-off self-released pieces on Bandcamp and Soundcloud. That method of working definitely seems to suit Lattimore, as this “box of memories”/impressionist travelogue is at least as good as any of her actual albums and the gorgeous “Wawa By The Ocean” and “The Warm Shoulder” easily rank among her finest moments to date.

There are lot of preconceptions that I have about what a harp album is likely to contain, but one thing that I never expected to encounter was a rippling, lushly beautiful tribute to the beloved hoagie-purveying convenience store Wawa. Technically, I still have not encountered that, as the opening “Wawa By The Ocean” is more directly inspired by Mary’s memories of trips to the beach town of Ship Bottom, NJ, but Wawa still amusingly sent her a prize pack when they found out about the song. Being a harpist seems like it can be very lucrative sometimes. 

As for the song itself, “Wawa” is quite a slow-burning and quiet stunner, unfolding a lovely bittersweet melody over a beautiful descending progression of arpeggios. While the composition itself is quite wonderful, Lattimore’s subtly escalating use of effects gradually transforms the piece into an exquisitely layered dreamscape of shimmering afterimages, undulating hazes of overlapping notes, and gently hallucinatory delay. ¬†It is quite an impressive achievement indeed, as the piece does not evolve so much as seamlessly dissolve into heavenly soft-focus unreality. 

Naturally, that makes “Wawa” an impossible act to follow, but Mary doubles down with the even longer “Bold Rides.” Initially, that elegiac piece sounds like fairly standard Lattimore fare (which is just fine), but eventually a new vibrato-heavy and zither-like motif blossoms in the upper registers that makes me feel like I just time-traveled back to an imperial Chinese court. Though it is somewhat less successful than its predecessor due to its lack of a central heart-grabbing melody, “Bold Rides” follows a very similar trajectory, as the various layers gradually start to deliriously bleed together and tumble all over one another. In fact, “Bold Rides” ultimately takes that processing even further, eventually reversing and transforming one layer into chirping abstraction.

The next piece takes a languorous trip to Twin Peaks, as the brief and hazily rippling “We Just Found Out She Died” pays tribute to The Log Lady (Margaret Lanterman passed away soon after Lattimore saw her speak). The evocatively titled “It Was Late And We Watched The Hotel Burn” is yet another major piece, eschewing conventional structure for bleary, hallucinatory ambiance, weaving a distorted tapestry of backwards melodies, plinking and overlapping cascades of arpeggios, and an undercurrent of blown-speaker rumble and snarl. 

The following “The Warm Shoulder” (inspired by a cannibalism-themed joke, naturally) unexpectedly distills the best aspects of “Wawa” and “Bold Rides” into one concise and perfectly chiseled piece, lazily unfolding a beautiful melody over a delicate tapestry of arpeggios, then gradually embellishing it with more exotic zitherisms and subtly psychotropic layers of haze and delay. The album then winds to a close with soft-focus reverie “Your Glossy Camry,” which initially seems like a pleasant and lazily undulating soundscape of pointillist arpeggios before unexpectedly blossoming into a lovely and tender solo. While it is not the strongest piece on the album, it makes an absolutely perfect coda as it gradually pares down to an unexpected level of quiet intimacy (it feels like every little pick and scrape is amplified and nakedly audible by the end).

The most withering critique that I can muster of Collected Works is merely that “We Just Found Out She Died” is a bit underwhelming and that a few of the longer pieces could have benefited from more aggressive editing. Of course, the counterargument for the latter is that the longer pieces all tend to undergo a striking transformation at some point, which is a compositional tactic that often benefits from the length of the journey. Bringing up perceived flaws is kind of beside the point here anyway, as it is pretty hard to be disappointed that a compilation of unreleased material falls just shy of perfection. 

For the most part, Collected Pieces is a genuine revelation. I admittedly have a tendency towards hyperbole sometimes, but a piece like “Wawa By The Ocean” manages to elicit an almost childlike level of joy and wonder in me, as Lattimore is able to craft something of guileless, simple, and heartfelt beauty, yet still manages to imbue it with enough depth, experimentation, and subtly unreality to overcome my jaded aversion to prettiness. 

I could probably also go on all day about Lattimore’s knack for affecting melodies and genius for transcending the constraints of the harp’s limited palette, but the real magic of her best work lies in the refreshing, clear-eyed purity of her vision: while Lattimore admittedly employs a healthy arsenal of studio effects, that artifice generally tends to be in service of a strong, focused melodic hook presented with elegantly uncluttered accompaniment and she hits the mark with uncanny regularity here. I think this might actually be my favorite Mary Lattimore album.

Listen here.

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Mary Lattimore, “At the Dam” (Ghostly International, 2016)

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Harpist Mary Lattimore’s excellent second solo album is the fruit of a grant-financed road trip across the US, inspired by various natural wonders along the way and recorded at several friends’ houses. While traveling around with a harp does not sound particularly convenient to me, it certainly seems like Lattimore knows how to put grant money to good use. She also knows the fastest way to my heart, which happens to be naming an album after a Joan Didion essay. Naturally, At The Dam is a beautiful album, as the harp is always an inherently pleasant instrument when in competent hands. Lattimore goes much deeper than the expected lovely, rippling arpeggios though, crafting five pleasantly relaxed and languorous pieces enhanced with a healthy amount of experimentation and sublime effects sorcery.

The album opens in fine fashion with the twinkling, sun-dappled arpeggio patterns of “Otis Walks into the Woods,” a lovely elegy to Lattimore’s blind dog who vanished into a forest one day. Taken strictly as a composition, it is quite wonderful, as Lattimore slowly builds up force and forward motion while weaving overdubbed melodies into a beguiling web. My favorite aspect, however, is the way that it gradually becomes increasingly psychedelic, as notes start subtly pinging, panning, plunging, and quivering around the central theme. That is a very effective and evocative move, as it gives the piece the feel of an increasingly phantasmagoric journey without sacrificing any of its momentum. 

Eventually, however, the structure completely dissolves into a dreamy coda of drones, pulses, and backwards harp swells and it is absolutely gorgeous: the transcendent soundtrack to a faithful dog leaving all earthly concerns behind. The considerably shorter piece that follows (“Jimmy V”) is not nearly as heartbreaking, thankfully, as it bizarrely takes it inspiration from basketball coach Jimmy Valvano. It is still quite lovely, however, gradually evolving from somewhat straightforward harp fare (sweeping and rippling) into a wonderfully unraveled and delay-heavy coda that unexpectedly re-coheres into a final fragile, wobbly, and submerged-sounding melody.

The similarly brief “In the Quiet of Night” initially seems somewhat unexceptional, but then unexpectedly blossoms into the single most gorgeous melody on the entire album. Also, Lattimore proves to be something of a genius with harmony and dynamics, twisting and embellishing her heavenly melody until it feels like a fluidly dancing, shimmering entity completely independent of the song’s pre-existing structure or time-signature. 

Lattimore returns to more slow-burning, longform fare for At The Dam’s two remaining pieces, however. On the otherwise languorously undulating and diffuse “Jaxine Drive,” she intermittently reprises the hallucinatory processing of “Otis” with a vengeance, transforming a gentle reverie into something considerably more hallucinatory and insectoid. For the most part though, “Jaxine” is a very quiet and subdued piece. Amusingly, it sometimes seems like The Edge stopped by to lay down some atmospheric guitar coloration, which I suppose is weirdly appropriate since much of this album was recorded on a friend’s porch in Joshua Tree. 

All of At The Dam‘s pieces seem to boast some kind of “showstopper” moment though and the one for “Jaxine Drive” unexpectedly turns up after about 8-minutes: the complexly layered web of harpistry transforms into a dreamy, shimmering heaven of processed, backwards swells. The final “Ferris Wheel, January” follows a similar trajectory, beginning with seemingly improvised sweeps of rich, reverberating arpeggios. Gradually, however, the piece’s raison d’être becomes clearer, as the increased use of looping and delay transforms it into a blissfully lysergic haze that eventually blossoms into a slow-motion, hypnagogic waltz (of sorts).

Enjoyable as it is, however, “Ferris Wheel” inadvertently highlights a couple of ways in which At The Dam could have been a better album. For one, it clocks in at over 13 minutes, which feels like a bit much. The material is certainly strong, but it would be even stronger if it were somewhat more distilled. Also, there is a brief moment near the end where a field recording of either breaking waves or a passing car on a rainy street intrudes. 

That fleeting moment made me realize that: 1.) I wish Lattimore had included ambient sounds from the various stages of her trip to provide a shifting sense of place, and 2.) just about every song on At The Dam relies very heavily on processing & effects for its dynamic arc. Fortunately, Lattimore executes her mildly psychedelic enhancements very effectively, so I do not mind that she kept returning to the same well. I just do not think that she used all of her options. 

I can definitely see why she made the album the way she did, however, as there is an endearing purity and simplicity to these pieces: while there is ample evidence of processing and overdubbing, it still feels like Lattimore restricted her palette to just the sounds produced from her harp on that porch in the desert. Also, hypothesizing about the ways in which At The Dam could be even better shifts the focus away from everything that Lattimore did beautifully. Each of these five pieces is richly melodic, tender, and evocative and there is nary a misstep to be found, as every single one gradually gives way to at least one absolutely gorgeous passage. While its pace admittedly meanders at times, it is hard to complain when the ultimate destination proves to be well-worth the journey.

Listen here.