LUMP - Animal
LUMP doesn’t fit inside any of Laura Marlings other work. It provides a real shift in texture, the electronic beats compliment Laura Marling’s voice perfectly. The light psychedelic sounds produce a strangeness, or alienness which fits Marling’s slightly odd lyrics. They’re not hugely overbearing though, instead complimenting and backing her vocal and lyrical work. Opening with an aqueous pottering beat, Marling’s vocals explore the dynamic and melodic range.
It sounds nocturnal, the beats suppressed and synths dark and cool. Marling rarely exploring the higher vocal range. On ‘Gamma Ray’ a jagged groove sits below layered vocal lines, Marling really shows off her diversity of voice on this track. The bulbous bassy sound morphs in the synthesizer give a sense of misshapen shapes, a change in sound, space and reality, It creates a real sense of organic sound. A lot of the sounds, while digitalized or at least sounding artificial, they have a real acoustic quality. Shades of lo-fi come through, Mike Lindsay playing the Eventide H949 Harmonizer(featured on David Bowie’s Low).
Red Snakes exudes ethereality, a raindrop piano trails behindMarling’s tender vocal work. The whirring backing of various instrumentals creates a sombre, melancholic and encompassing sound.
It’s a delicate album, and it doesn’t try to punch too muchabove its weight. It sits amongst both Mike and Laura’s work as a project, and it works perfectly in that context. It’s an exploration of slightly leftfield pop music and that’s predominantly where its strengths are.
There’s inventive melodies and intriguing sounds from the space-age, earthly to the aquatic. Like a New Age dream, it saunters along at its own wonderful pace. The talent of Mike Lindsay and the beautiful vocals of Laura Marling help this album sit above what could ordinarily become quite a flat psychedelic indie pop album. It’s also a great display of good pop music, it oozes nostalgia on tracks like ‘We Cannot Resist’ and ‘Paradise’ where the music picks up a Sparks-likegroove. While the pop explosion is gentler than with Sparks, it suits Marling’s voice to perfection.
Wholly it’s a solid entrant to the now-growing LUMP discography and an excellent supplement to both Lindsay and Marling’s respective work. The album gently fades out, ending with closing remarks, detailing the gear, the personnel and everything that made it happen.
7/10
