Los Angeles-based harpist Mary Lattimore has announced the release of her new album Silver Ladders, due for release on October 9th via Ghostly International.
Since her last full-length, 2018’s Hundreds of Days, Lattimore has toured internationally, released 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 leaves 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!”
Listen to “Sometimes He’s In My Dreams” below:
Silver Ladders was recorded over nine days at Halstead’s studio stationed on an old airfield and it inspired by Cornish tales that Halstead shared with Lattimore, alongside collected fragments of conversations and ideas and her own travels.
Silver Ladders artwork & tracklist:
1. Pine Trees
2. Silver Ladders
3. Til a Mermaid Drags You Under
4. Sometimes He’s In My Dreams
5. Chop on the Clumbout
6. Don’t Look
7. Thirty Tulips