Consuming the Tangible

Some music haunts you. Some soothe you. It’s a rare album that can do both, and as I continue my search for serenity in the aftermath of, well…just life, I remembered this album from Mary Lattimore was sitting in my collection. A recommendation from my friend Erik (another one of those touchstones for new music I’ve never explored), Lattimore uses her harp on Silver Ladders to evoke ethereal waves of introspection that never creep into sentimentality or schmaltz. Spare and delicate, it lives in the empty spaces it creates.

Traditionally a very DIY artist, Silver Ladders sees Lattimore partnered with someone who knows a thing or two about pulling evocative music out of the air: Slowdive’s Neil Halstead. His production gives the album a warmth and lushness that is surprising given the almost skeletal arrangements at play. There’s an air of hope in opener “Pine Trees” as her melodies sit over pads that ground the track in a sort of dream pop confection without being cloying. The title track is almost washed out in reverb, taking a shoegaze approach to music that is anything but, if that makes sense. Rather than a crutch it’s an intentional approach, and not indicative of the rest of the production – Halstead matches Lattimore’s musical intentions individually, and that diverse approach helps to add cohesion to the overall sound. Listening to the gentle sounds of “Sometimes He’s In My Dreams” you would think it’s coming from a different record production-wise, but sitting where it does in the sequence it feels a natural extension of the journey you’re on with the album.

If there’s a highlight for me, it’s the epic 10-minute “Til A Mermaid Drags You Under” with its mysterious guitar and dusty Western vibe. The low end that punctuates the more ominous sections is deep, filling your brain as Lattimore’s harp sprinkles motes of light that dance around the darkness. It’s a visceral, evocative track that incites poetry and dream as description; I can’t think of any other way to describe it. The beautiful, undulating synths that adorn “Chop On The Climbout” match the genesis of the song title, taken from Lattimore hearing a pilot state there might be some chop on the climb out”. You do get that sense of liftoff, of a spaceship bound for lighter, distant shores.

I realize as I sit and listen to Silver Ladders again, the sun streaming through my windows on an early November morning, that I often turn to the same things again and again out of habit. The whole point of physical media for me is to be a reminder, a light that can be examined in leisure, not out of a sense of obligation or habit. Listening to Mary Lattimore now I remember why the album struck me when Erik first recommended it, and why it’s vital for me to have an album like this available, tangible, ready to offer solace in its dark and chiming notes.