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Mary Lattimore, "At the Dam"
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 laptop-tweakery.
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 laptop tweakery 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 laptop processing 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.
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