London – While it was far from her first demo offering, Lady Lamb began to gain prominence on the back of Mammoth Swoon, a 15-song set of previously unreleased, bedroom and radio tracks, several of which were later reimagined on her 2013 debut studio album, Ripely Pine. The Lady’s 2015 follow-up, After, maintains the surreal charm of her work while expanding the palette from which she draws. Now the bare Lady Lamb, shorn of ‘the Beekeeper’ moniker, we could wonder if the next record might simply carry her birth name, Aly Spaltro. It is like she is slowly shedding the trappings of her early precociousness.
Co-producing the album with Nadim Issa, Spaltro has conquered a growing armoury of instruments – electric guitar, bass, banjo and keyboards among them – each handled with increasing confidence and skill. The young girl with the unexpectedly raw, emotive voice has matured and created a fuller sound for herself, with dynamics that surprise or unsettle you offset by plenty of light and shade. As a case in point, “Vena Cava” provides a deceptively languid introduction to the album before, like its namesake, providing a conduit for fuzz guitar drenched choruses. It sets the tone for a record where simple strummed guitar passages are often juxtaposed with sudden, fierce explosions of sound.
Maybe she is not about to claim Lady Gaga’s mantle yet there is also a growing pop element to her work evidenced in this latest offering. Falling asleep on a box of candy is clearly something any American teen might own up to: “We fell asleep on a box of milk duds / They melted into the clubhouse cushions.” “Billions of Eyes” is blessed with a brisk melody propelled by jangly guitar chords and punching drums. It has pop immediacy, even underlined by a da-da-da-da chorus that contrasts nicely with the Lady’s trademark lyric streams of consciousness. In this case she juggles the conflict of being a face among strangers away on tour with craving solitude and home comforts. The former has its rewards (“I felt so defeated til I jumped on to see all the warm smiles were for me”) yet it doesn’t quite compensate (“I just want to fall into a pile of warm laundry / I just wanna keep very very quiet, yeah”).
From the genre-hopping tour-de-force of “Violet Clementine” to the less adorned indie-rock of “Heretic” and the quiet reflection on death in the family sensitively explored in “Sunday Shoes”, Lady Lamb’s record creates an aura of shifting moods that somehow achieve cohesion. For instance, in “Dear Arkansas Daughter” rapid-fire bursts of visceral electric guitar are relieved by an acoustic middle passage in which Spaltro almost seems about to segue Neil Young’s “After the Goldrush”. The ability to attain cohesion through such disparate elements is in Lady Lamb’s nature. There is a kind of restlessness in her work, an inner strength and an independence of spirit that reflects her nomadic early life, growing up primarily in the Southwest (Arizona, California, and Nevada), moving to Germany with her family in 2001 and back to her home state of Maine three years later.
That mood shifts can happen in a single song is further evidenced by “Penny Licks”, a tune that first saw light of day on the aforementioned collection of early demos, Mammoth Swoon. Lady Lamb converts what is essentially one verse and a chorus into something of an opus, shifting styles and tempos as she works the components culminating in a scorching guitar solo underpinned and swelled out by organ.
Throughout this record, her patchwork, intuitive songwriting always keeps the listener engaged. Some lyrics are too personal to be easily understood but you can’t fail to be moved by the poetry of her imagery and how it shifts from the everyday to the fantastical. The sheer individuality of her work also stamps her as an original; a modern indie-girl with an affinity with the troubadours of the past who is unafraid to experiment musically. With great success too.
Originally released in the US in Spring, this album is also now available in UK and Europe. Readers can catch Lady Lamb on tour across the US, Canada, UK and Europe from August 21.
Tony Hardy
Tony’s great passion in life is music and nothing gives him more pleasure than unearthing good, original new music and championing independent musicians. His association with Best New Bands brings great opportunities for this. He also writes for Consequence of Sound and is a judge for Glastonbury Festival’s Emerging Talent Competition.
Latest posts by Tony Hardy (see all)
- New Bands At Glastonbury: Haim, London Grammar And More - June 28, 2017
- New Bands At Glastonbury: Father John Misty, Alt-J & More - June 26, 2017
- New Bands At Glastonbury – George Ezra – Royal Blood & More - June 25, 2017
