Los Angeles-based harpist Mary Lattimore returns with Silver Ladders, the full-length follow-up to acclaimed album Hundreds of Days.
Since the release of her last full-length album ‘Hundreds of Days’ in 2018, Mary Lattimore has been pretty occupied – touring internationally, releasing collaborative albums with artists such as Meg Baird and Mac McCaughan, and shared a friends-based remix album featuring artists such as Jónsi and Julianna Barwick.
At one of her festival appearances, Lattimore met Slowdive’s Neil Halstead: “A friend introduced us because she knew how big of a fan I was and Neil and I had a little chat… The next day, I just thought maybe he’d be into producing my next record.” He was. Lattimore traditionally records her albums holed up by herself, so the addition of Halstead’s touches as a producer and collaborator leave a profound trace. “I flew on a little plane to Newquay in Cornwall where he lives with his lovely partner Ingrid and their baby. I didn’t know what his studio was like, he’d never recorded a harp, but somehow it really worked.”
First single “Sometimes He’s In My Dreams” was written collaboratively between Lattimore and Halstead during the recording sessions. Mary comments: “It’s a song borne from a long improvisation – it was a section we both liked out of a longer piece. After I finished playing, Neil shaped it and looped part of it and then added his dreamy guitar line. What started out as simple meandering solo harp with a ricocheting delay got a little deeper and more fully formed with Neil’s help. It’s probably my favorite part of the record because it’s nothing I would’ve thought to do, having made a lot of music on my own on the past. Plus, that guitar!”
Inspired by Cornish tales that Halstead shared with Lattimore, alongside collected fragments of conversations and ideas and her own travels, these songs are clearly tales, and yet ‘Silver Ladders’ is open to interpretation.
‘Silver Ladders’ is out on October 9thvia Ghostly international and is available to pre-order here: https://ghostly.ffm.to/mary-lattimore-silver-ladders
For fans of special edition vinyl, there is also to be a Dinked Edition.
Dinked Edition No. #60
+ Exclusive transparent sand coloured vinyl.
+ Exclusive full-colour sheet music for single and title track ‘Silver Ladders’.
+ Just 400 copies pressed.
+ Individually numbered.
You can order Dinked Editions via a network of independent record shops (details here) including Drift Records.
Photo credit: Rachael Pony Cassells