1) Late to the Flight; 2) May I Be the Light; 3) Rolling Thunder; 4) Curse of the Contemporary; 5) Hand Hold Hero; 6) Shake Your Shelter; 7) LUMP Is a Product
Laura Marling and Mike Lindsay collaborate on a headphone-friendly and frustratingly short dream sequence journey.
Key tracks: "Late to the Flight", "Curse of the Contemporary", "Shake Your Shelter"
I started losing track of Laura Marling's career rather soon after it began. I loved her debut but she found her signature sound after it, and unfortunately for me her more somber folk leanings just left me longing for more of her first album's playfulness. There was the occasional nice little ditty but it took until 2018 for me to really pay attention again. "Curse of the Contemporary", the lead single from LUMP - Marling's collaboration with Tunng's Mike Lindsay - was the most refreshing thing she had been a part of in what felt like forever. The sneakily foot-tapping groove underneath the manipulated guitars was a fantastic fit for Marling's still ethereal and charismatic voice, and after an extended period of that voice getting lost between shades of gray and beige it was great to hear it flourish in something full of life again.
"Curse of the Contemporary" is a bit of a red herring for LUMP's self-titled debut, in that it's the only song across the brief seven-track set (of which only six are really songs) which has that kind of mischievous sense of fun to it. LUMP is, for most parts, very much the opposite. The electronic-oriented production is characterised by vast amounts of space, with carefully selected instrumental details growing their presence ever-so-subtly across the stretched out minutes. Marling's verses, oft repeated and rarely shifting into any other recognisable songwriting sections, are more akin to mantras where the rhythm and tone are just as important, if not more, than the actual words. Marling's voice is a fantastic one, and here she's often using it in a way completely different to what I'm used to from her. The soundscapes she and Lindsay then craft around those vocal parts have a slight sense of dream-like askewness; lots of ethereal moodiness to sink into, if it wasn't for a foreboding feeling of everything teetering over the edge just out of sight.
LUMP's strengths lie in that atmosphere. The segued-together songs form one large aural ambience where the differences between the songs may not necessarily strike out if you're not actually paying attention. LUMP is a headphone album, through and through - you only get everything out of it once you're actually in a position where you can literally hear all the small movements and can focus on them, and this is particularly true for the first half. The gorgeous slow start "Late to the Flight" is whatever you could call a lullaby that softly brings you back to the waking life, and "May I Be the Light" flutters and stutters nervously with a specifically chosen set of instruments slowly tying it down towards its end - both different in their own ways, but so obsessed with keeping a certain kind of sonic cohesiveness which paints them in vastly the same colours. It's only the cymbal crashes in the pseudo-rock-out finale of "Rolling Thunder" that first burst the cloud wide open briefly, signaling the album's incoming decision to sit up and make a stand for its second half.
As positively hypnotic as LUMP can be, it never gets as exciting as it does on "Curse of the Contemporary". Marling's multi-tracked vocals form a layer over layer on top of the swirling, ghost-like guitars, and the song picks up in twitchy intensity as it dances away towards its conclusion: it sounds like two collaborators hitting off perfectly outside their usual comfort zones and brainstorming a party of their own. It's the rightful stand-out song of the album, and while it's completely out of sync with the rest of the record stylistically, its placement right in the middle works out fantastically naturally as part of the overall flow, where the first half feels like a intro building itself piece by piece and then the second half serves as the comedown from the rollercoaster ride.
Following its centrepoint, LUMP showcases another side of itself - one that starts giving a bit of a backbone to its ambience while still operating from its dream-like shell. The bubbling synth buzz and pounding beat of "Hand Hold Hero" disturb the record's overall serenity with a number of juxtaposing sounds, threatening to rise up and march out but holding itself back by a thread. "Shake Your Shelter" becomes another key standout: of all the songs on the album's calmer spectrum it's the most fleshed-out in its arrangement, sounding like an alternative rock slowburner coming from somewhere deep underwater, with the weight and cold dark foreboding of the dark water surrounding it. It's arguably the most conventional cut of the record but it gives the short run of songs a fitting finale by bringing all the sound elements of the project together. Its only ugly spot is how abruptly it leads to the premature end of the actual outro track "LUMP Is a Product" - for such a collected album, it finishes in a rush.
(Fun fact: "LUMP Is a Product" differs rather drastically between the digital and physical versions of the album. On CD/LP it's little more than an ambient intro with vaguely audible, heavily processed vocal clips; digitally, it features Marling audibly reading out the album's credits that would otherwise be found in the actual physical liner notes. Notch for the streamers - it's a far more intriguing of a closer with Marling's spoken word acknowledgments on it than without.)
The quick closure is a shame because for its short duration LUMP is an intriguing, exciting little collaboration piece, and it ends just as it's really began to entice you. It's great to hear Marling, whose voice I've always loved, partake in something where she sounds properly engaged again, and there's something truly entrancing to the songs here when they get going. It misses just that little extra dash of something more to make it a magical listen, which makes it particularly pesky that it also bears the hallmarks of a one-off project where the lightning might never strike again - but it's something that stays with you, simply because the presence of Marling in this Twin Peaks dream sequence ambient pop dimension works so well.
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