Lamb’s fourth album, Between Darkness and Wonder, is a coming of age record.
Having broken new ground on their eponymous debut in 1997 with their welding of languid and soulful torch songs to the piston-beat backbone of drum ‘n’ bass and further refining this combination of amen breaks and heartbreak with the next two records, they’ve reached a point of maturity with Between Darkness and Wonder. The opening statement — “Darkness” — compresses every trick that Louise Rhodes and Andy Barlow has learned in the past five years, compressing the clattering beats, the orchestral swells, the grandiose sweep of Louise’s voices and the lush production into a five minute history lesson.
There is a rippling band of muscles under the smooth skin of this record. “Sugar
5″ bruises the walls as it swaggers about the room, its thick rhythm section knocking over tables and chairs. Louise’s velvet voice has the sting of independence as she boxes our ears. “My ears hear every sound / And now my eyes can see / I can leap and not look back / This earth has greater arms to hold me.” Barlow brings Debussy into the 21st century in “Angelica” as he welds a piano sonata to a turntable workout and a chamber orchestra. Louise warns us in “‘Til The Clouds Clear” that we’re going to “take the whole world with us when we go” over a minimal drum kit and acoustic guitar. She begins to howl and the rhythm section explodes. “Nothing you do can seem to break through / This darkness smothering you / When it takes hold, your heart turns cold / The very soul seeps out of you…”
There is self-assurance in Louise’s voice and Andy’s production, a visceral offering of heart and blood through these eleven songs. There are moments of tempestuous fury, eruptions of love and affection, which are tempered with stretches of elegant restraint and silk-wrapped longing. “Wonder” overflows with strings and harp while Louise considers the possibility that God doesn’t exist. “But,” she whispers, “there’s some magic out there.” If you can see through the armor of “Sugar 5,” you will find a tremulous optimist who is still seeks a solution for her heart’s longing, a romantic who still wonders at the possibilities.
The torch singer becomes a naked seer — a prophet who, striped of everything but her voice, reveals the secret workings of her heart. The angels of heaven — their voices heard as a wealth of strings — sustain her in this most intimate moment. “Are you feeling lost? / You needn’t be / Like you’ve lost all hope and your sanity / You needn’t be / If we only love one turn / In this life, we have to
learn.” “Learn” is just two of the 46 minutes of Between Darkness and Wonder, but they are the naked purity of hope which sustains you through the blackness and is your guide to the wonder and the light.
Suspended between the past and the future, snared by the eternal errors of our digressions and failures and kept alive by the promise of better decisions tomorrow, we exist in this space between darkness and wonder. The two poles pull at us, constantly tugging us down or lifting us aloft. On the days when the downturn is too strong, grab Lamb’s Between Darkness and Wonder. This record will knock you out of your ill orbit and give you hope.
Between Darkness and Wonder is OUT NOW on Koch Entertainment.
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