Acclaimed singer/songwriter Laura Marling is teasing new music from Lump, her collaboration with Tunng frontman Mike Lindsay. The duo previously released a self-titled album together in 2018, which made it onto mxdwn’s Top Albums list for that year.

In the teaser, there’s a sound clip of some reversed talking and a rising vocal sound as Lump’s name and the date May 5, 2021 appears on screen. While the sound plays, Marling and Lindsay are seen in a white room with tubing made from plastic sheets. If the sound is indicative of the direction of their new music, they might show a more experimental side to their last project’s electronic folk-pop style.

 

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Lump formed in June 2016 when Marling and Lindsay met in London after a Neil Young show and realized they were mutual fans of each other’s work. Lindsay had been working on a project that he wanted someone else to write and record vocals for, so it worked out that Marling got the part and they began recording her contributions a few days later. 

They stated that their first album was inspired by absurdist poets such as Edward Lear and Ivor Cutler as well as early-20th-century surrealism. It’s an album that suggests that individualism is absurd and explores how people cultivate public personas to escape the mundanity of meaninglessness. The album was a critical success, partially due to the popularity of singles like “Curse of the Contemporary,” “Late to the Flight” and “May I Be the Light.”

It’s definitely one of Lindsay’s most popular projects, although Tunng has retained a solid following since forming in 2003. They’ve put out seven studio albums together, including Mother’s Daughter and Other Songs (2005), Comments of the Inner Chorus (2006), Good Arrows (2007), …And Then We Saw Land (2010), Turbines (2013), Songs You Make at Night (2018) and Tung Presents…DEAD CLUB (2020). Last year’s record saw Tunng turning their soft folk sound into a concept album about grief and death.

Marling is the more popular Lump member, with folk hits like “Ghosts,” “What He Wrote” and “Rambling Man.” After a two-year stint as the keyboardist for Noah and the Whale, she began releasing music under her own name in 2007, breaking out with her debut album Alas I Cannot Swim in 2008. Her 2020 record Song for Our Daughter proved to be one of her most successful albums yet and made it into the top 10 for mxdwn’s Top 50 Best Albums of 2020 list.

Photo credit: Sharon Alagna