Mary Lattimore isn’t your typical American indie artist. She’s a classically trained harpist, graduate of the prestigious Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York, and her new album, Goodbye, Hotel Arkada, went to No 4 on Billboard’s New Age chart, where artists like Enya have permanent residency.
“Yeah, I’ll take that,” she says ahead of her New Zealand visit, from a tour stop in Detroit. “I’m happy with whatever they say because what I do is hard to classify. I just make what I make.”
Lattimore’s music and her connections are wider than the often pejorative “new age” definition and her classical training.
Goodbye, Hotel Arkada’s guests include Lol Tolhurst (co-founder of the Cure), Rachel Goswell (Mojave 3, Slowdive) and Christchurch post-rock guitarist/composer Roy Montgomery (a founder of seminal Flying Nun band Pin Group in 1980).
Lattimore’s credentials are further enhanced by a sampling of those she’s collaborated with: Thurston Moore (Sonic Youth), Meg Baird (psychedelic rockers Heron Oblivion and the psyche-folk Espers), London’s indie-rock Clientele, Kurt Vile, Steve Gunn, experimental composer Julianna Barwick, Jarvis Cocker …
“I’m just part of their orbit and because I play an unusual instrument people are curious about how it would sound [with their music].
“It’s a cool challenge trying to bring my instruments into that context but part of it is being in the right place at the right time. Like with Kurt, I’ve known him for so many years we’re like family. I taught his little girls harp and now they are accomplished and still playing.”
Her own music – which has been remixed by the likes of Jónsi from Iceland’s Sigur Rós and Philadelphia DJ King Britt – is often prompted by the natural world, memories and “translating something unspoken or existing in your subconscious, almost like an exorcism as you process things you have latent and inside”.
Some pieces come with bizarre, Frank Zappa-like titles: Welsh Corgis in the Snow, Princess Nicotine, Altar of Tammy, Blender in a Blender and … It Was Late and We Watched the Motel Burn.
“That came when I was hired to play keyboards with a solo musician. It was a tumultuous tour, with us and the tour manager bringing mismatched personalities. But one night while driving we saw this abandoned motel on fire, which sticks in my mind because you don’t see things like that often. And three people who weren’t getting along were bonded by this strange moment late at night.”
And On The Day You Saw The Dead Whale? Lattimore was at an artists’ residency in Bolinas, north of San Francisco, and a whale, hit by a boat, washed up on the beach. “I’d never seen a whale, much less a dead one. It was massive. I felt so sad and I just wanted to write an ode to it because that moment is still alive in my mind. A beautiful creature, and this was our fault.”
Lattimore’s work is often imbued with a gentle, meditative beauty that evokes states of consciousness as much as a response to events, as with the glistening, impressionistic The Quiet At Night, on her 2016 album At the Dam, a collection taking its title from an essay in Joan Didion’s The White Album.
“I want to offer beauty to people, and they, hopefully, pass it along and we can feel connected to others. This world is so dark sometimes, [my music] can offer a little sparkle and time to reflect.”
She has long explored the way music, visual arts and writing can stimulate several senses, making herself “a sponge for all the beautiful, cool stuff human beings can be capable of creating”.
“You can use the love people put into what they make to fuel your own compositions. It’s infectious.”
Many of her albums are location specific, but she quickly laughs off the resonances of Goodbye, Hotel Arkada, prompted by visiting a small Croatian town where the historic hotel was undergoing modernisation.
“It isn’t really about that exact hotel – I don’t want to get into trouble for discouraging people to go to this beautiful place. I might never be allowed in the town again.
“But it was about change and appreciating things before they get modernised, and noticing a moment when they are on the brink of change. This hotel will never be the same again, so it’s about encapsulating a fleeting moment before it passes”.
Her visit is her second after appearing at The Tuning Fork in 2019 and she’s travelling light, renting a local harp, although she hauls her own around the US. “Yeah, I’m staring at it right now,” she says, having pushed it on a trolley from the car to her hotel room this freezing night in Detroit. So, no regrets about not having chosen a pocket-sized piccolo? “Oh, no. No, thank you.”
Mary Lattimore plays at Meow, Wellington, on Wednesday, November 29 and The Others Way Festival, Auckland, on Friday, December 1. Goodbye, Hotel Arkada is available digitally, on CD and vinyl.
