Lady Lamb - Tender Warriors Club EP

Upon his rediscovery in the early 60s, Son House cheerfully exclaimed that hadn't touched a guitar in 20 years. The two young guys who found him had to reteach him to play in the style they'd learnt from him in the first place. On The Complete 1965 Sessions, he made multiple mistakes and lacked the deft touch he had 30 years earlier. What he did have, besides his perfectly preserved voice, was a renewed passion for the music, which he channeled every time his fingers touched the strings.

Technical ability is not the point of that analogy - Spaltro has no lack - but her singing and playing are similarly resonant. The entirety of Tender Warriors Club is Spaltro alone and acoustic, with extra layers of vocals the only overdubs. In this way it recalls her early lo-fi recordings, and it's something I didn't know I needed after she showed what she could do with a full band on her first studio album Ripely Pine (2013) and its equally strong follow-up After (2015). Tender Warriors Club seamlessly fuses the intimacy of that early stage of her career with the improved songwriting chops of her more polished recent work. The EP relies little on effects, but its two best songs use them pointedly: "Heaven Bent" leaves space at the end of phrases for the reverb to perceptibly decay, and later adds delay for a more pronounced effect; "We Are No One Else" makes further use of reverb, allowing multi-tracked vocals to build to a near-cacophony before dying out suddenly.

Tender Warriors Club is no mere stop-gap or house clearing exercise, but a cohesive and fully realised release, and another notch in the belt of an already accomplished young songwriter.

Related:

Lady Lamb - After

Lady Lamb the Beekeeper - Ripely Pine

Lady Lamb - After

After is Lady Lamb (formerly Lady Lamb the Beekeeper)'s second studio album, following 2013's Ripely Pine and a string of lo-fi self-released recordings dating back to 2007. Ripely Pine, along with Torres' self-titled debut and Danish punks Iceage's second album You're Nothing, was an album by a promising young artist in my end of year list that was littered with the likes of Polvo, My Bloody Valentine and Richard Thompson. Iceage released a superb third album last year, Torres' second album is due in May, and here, of course, is After.

After very quickly answers the question of whether or not Aly Spaltro was willing to ride the crest of a wave and write twelve more songs in the particularly manic folk-rock style of Ripely Pine. This is one case in which I would have been fine with that, but to her credit, she's pushing herself in different directions already. It's not as if After is a radical reinvention - the tricks and tropes of Ripely Pine are all over it, in fact - but Spaltro's approach is more measured and her lyrics are broader in scope while still loaded with personal frames of reference. She's also more confident than before, which is really fucking saying something. She got a lot of mileage out of quiet-loud dynamics on Ripely Pine, building tension with the former and providing release with the latter. This carries over to After, but flourishes such as the way the opener "Vena Cava" stretches her voice and the stuttering rhythm of the penultimate "Batter" show she knows how to tread the line between exploiting an approach works and simply repeating herself. Elsewhere, songs such as "Ten" disperse her energy more evenly, and the contrast informs much of After's character. It keeps the listener on their toes, and in that sense, it's a microcosm for the career of an artist for whom complacency is not an option.

Related:

Lady Lamb the Beekeeper - Ripely Pine

Top 30 Albums of 2013

30. Deer Tick - Negativity

29. Majical Cloudz - Impersonator

28. Mount Moriah - Miracle Temple

27. Sarah Jarosz - Build Me Up from Bones

26. Deerhunter - Monomania

25. Alela Diane - About Farewell

24. Boards of Canada - Tomorrow's Harvest

23. Iceage - You're Nothing

22. Iron & Wine - Ghost on Ghost

21. Haim - Days Are Gone

20. Chvrches - The Bones of What You Believe

19. Tomahawk - Oddfellows

18. Queens of the Stone Age - ...Like Clockwork

17. Richard Thompson - Electric

16. Janelle Monáe - The Electric Lady

15. Wire - Change Becomes Us

14. Fuck Buttons - Slow Focus

13. Bill Callahan - Dream River

12. Julia Holter - Loud City Song

11. Merchandise - Totale Nite

10. My Bloody Valenine - m b v

9. Run the Jewels - Run the Jewels

8. Lady Lamb the Beekeeper - Ripely Pine

7. Torres - Torres

6. Braids - Flourish/Perish

5. Throwing Muses - Purgatory/Paradise

4. No Joy - Wait to Pleasure

3. Deathfix - Deathfix

2. Polvo - Siberia

1. Arcade Fire - Reflektor

Related:

Top 30 Albums of 2013: Honourable Mentions

Polvo - Siberia

Bill Callahan - Dream River

Torres - Torres

Richard Thompson - Electric
My Bloody Valentine - m b v
Lady Lamb the Beekeeper - Ripely Pine

Lady Lamb the Beekeeper - Ripely Pine

Ripely Pine is 23 year-old Aly Spaltro's first studio album, but she'd recorded a handful of lo-fi albums starting in her teens. These recordings display a rare confidence, an approach beholden to nobody in particular and a preponderance of ideas, but are stronger conceptually than in execution. They are the sound of Spaltro finding her voice and honing her craft, and the reason Ripely Pine sounds like an audacious third studio album by an established artist.

Spaltro wrote many of the songs while still in her teens, and there are drafts of some of them among her early recordings, but she already had a knack for striking imagery, such as leprosy on the moon's surface tainting its glow. Although she played many of the instruments herself, she's taken advantage of having extra personnel and hasn't skimped on arrangements. Strings elevate some songs to a level just shy of operatic, while mariachi horns turn "Aubergine" into a song that is at once jaunty and harrowing. Songs that were made to rock, such as "Bird Balloons" do exactly that - in fact, Ripely Pine is primarily a rock album, albeit one made by someone with a folk singer's heart.