Mary Lattimore and Walt McClements are two of contemporary music's most renowned innovators. Each has managed to expand the perception of their instrument’s capabilities. Lattimore inventive harp processing and looping has brought the instrument to a new audience. Her prolific run of celestial solo albums and evocative film scores have redefined the instrument in the modern consciousness. Her genre-agnostic collaborations include work with Kurt Vile, Steve Gunn, Jeff Zeigler, Meg Baird, Julianna Barwick and Thurston Moore. McClements, who tours as a member of Weyes Blood, is an acclaimed composer in his own right, sculpting glacial atmospherics from the accordion. The Los Angeles based duo became quick friends on overlapping tours, sharing both a drive to push the sonic possibilities of their instruments and roots in North Carolina. Mary Lattimore and Walt McClements debut collaboration Rain on the Road blossomed out of that time spent on the road together, capturing the liminal existence of touring life in deeply cinematic compositions.
Recorded in the cozy setting of McClements’ apartment during a rainy December in LA, Rain on the Road finds an equilibrium between two usually disparate states of being for musicians: life on the road and life in the studio. Lattimore explains: “I can hear both the road-selves and the home-selves in these recordings, the two sides that don’t always get to meet.” McClements elaborates: “the rain both invokes serenity, as in the perfect peaceful drizzle at the mountain cabin, but can also be ominous… like when you are running late for a show, driving through a thunderstorm.” The album unfurls as a series of sonic vignettes, rolling landscapes hewn from longform improvisations for harp and accordion. Embellished with additional instrumentation such as the shimmering constellations of hand bells on “Stolen Bells” that glisten like lights on wet pavement, or the stately piano figures on “The Top of Thomas Street”; their pastoral pieces manage to paint vivid images.
Lattimore and McClement’s patient listening opens up space for small textures or allows the formation of soothing hypnotic cadences. The duo’s subtle use of field recordings woven into the album’s lithe atmospheres evoke their travels transporting the listener. Their sonic snapshots include an unexpected morning encounter with bears at Lattimore’s family cabin near Asheville. The resulting music is beautifully unhurried, meditative and joyously expansive.
The duo’s mastery of their respective instruments and their collective explorative nature belies the delicate complexity of their music. Their humility and their joy permeate every note making Rain on the Road – a beautiful listen. Mary Lattimore describes it simply as “letting melodies unspool with your close friend, no rush, nowhere to really be.”
