Emotional, Evocative Acoustic Poetry
The yin and yang of vulnerability and strength is one of the most powerful—and difficult—balances an artist can accomplish. One must be emotive and feeling and relatable enough to connect with a listener’s own heart and soul, but still compelling, captivating and confident enough to command attention. But it’s at this intersection that a singer-songwriter can often find their greatest successes, and the newest EP from folk-rock solo artist Lady Lamb leans on both of these fundamental truths to create Tender Warriors Club.
Lady Lamb, the stage name of Aly Spaltro, previously garnered critical interest with her LP After in 2015, noted for its sparse arrangements and emotional depth. While parts of Tender Warriors Club evoke traditional folk, with thoughtful strumming and straight-from-the-notebook poetry, Lady Lamb’s songs are not rooted in legacy sounds, technique and structures so much as they are in more progressive, experimental corners—a sound perfect for the coffee houses and galleries she’ll be playing at on her upcoming “Living Room” tour.
Opener “Heaven Bent” introduces the listener to Lady Lamb’s drama and drawl with a straightforward acoustic strumming pattern supplanting her emotive lyrics. Halfway through the song, things take a proggy turn with vocal manipulation that turns into guitar distortion, indicating much more creativity to come.
Track Two “Atalia” stays in a shadowy place, while “Salt,” at 4:33, is a more fleshed out, traditional take. With vocals in a higher register, and a barely-there ukulele accompaniment, the track shows off Lady Lamb’s dark lyricism in a stark fashion. “Some nights I’m convinced I’m already dead,” Spaltro sings with a bluesy bent in her voice, before recalling a misty memory at Coney Island.
Spaltro picks up the pace on “See You,” where she lets her voice soar as she wonders about the next time she lays eyes on a lover. The insecurity and anxiety are a recurring theme, but one pled with self-awareness. “Love is a luxury I cannot afford,” she sings on the heart-wrenching ballad, “Tangles.” Her delivery makes it sound like a presentment to the world, a statement of her heart’s truth, and yet the yearning and near-unravelling that shows up in the rest of the song (and indeed the album) suggests the Lady is still bubbling with passion.
Lady Lamb’s songs do not follow any similar structure, pattern or length—they are each their own wave, lapping up to the shore and sliding back down again. Though her work is minimalist, it is bone-deep in its feeling. Tender Warriors Club, at only seven tracks, proves Spaltro is as keen an editor as she is a lyricist.
As the album winds to a close, “We Are Nobody Else” clocks in as one of the album’s strongest, most memorable tracks as an ode to the better, more beautiful parts of existence–it’s also its most vocally complex with the closing moments of a softly sung refrain that brings a powerful build to a delicate end. Here, Spaltro recognizes the inherent balance in life: “the good glory of God, the great wrath of God,” she sings. But she quiets down the scene and ends the album on a softer note with“Crater Lake,” an under-two-minutes track with a light melancholy melody.
Lady Lamb has created a unique listen by straddling genre labels and taking vocal risks with murmurs and near-whispers. There’s a lot of feeling here, and a lot of mystery in the understated guitar parts and up-for-interpretation lyrics. With an often-sparse accompaniment, and an album that breezes by, Tender Warriors Club is an intimate glimpse, a peak through a cracked-open door that leaves a listener wondering what else is inside.
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