5

Lamb: life after death

In 2004, Lou Rhodes and Andy Barlow decided to put an end to Lamb, one of the most non-standard and fascinating projects of the present time. Lou, who was responsible for the vocals and lyrics, intended to switch to a solo career and replace electronica with acoustic stuff. Andy, producer and musician, also took up solo activities by launching a project called LOWB, recorded numerous remakes to songs by famous performers and kept on producing. Both ex-members of Lamb looked so busy with their new initiatives that it seems that neither could give even a slightest and spontaneous thought to resurrecting their duo. Nevertheless, after a short-time reunion for the sake of a tour mostly covering Australia, the musicians, quite unexpectedly, set their minds to give Lamb another chance. On May 5, 2011, the duet confirmed this intention with the official release of their fifth full-length record having quite an explainable title, 5. This is the duet’s first album in eight years, which makes it an easy thing to guess how much different the new Lamb would be from the Lamb we had yen years ago.

The vocals is what ties this Lamb with that Lamb

Lamb prepared the 5 album the way they have never released any of their four previous efforts. The participants of the project used to meet occasionally for a short period time to discuss the material because they lived far from each other. Besides, the recording process took place at Andrew Barlow’s home studio, a farm where severe weather conditions forced the musicians to forget about everything except making music. The basic variant of the record includes twelve tracks, and the expanded version is supplemented with seven more tracks, mostly instrumental pieces. There is no point comparing this release with the other works by Lamb if you take into consideration the fact that the members of the formation developed tastes to other types of music and adjusted their song-writing views. What matters still is that 5 preserves those very vocals of Lamb, the voice of Lou Rhodes. With her smart lyrics and emotional singing, she creates an action that is a pleasure to follow. This action unfolds on the background of trip-hop richly supported by folk and samples reproducing a great variety of sounds, for example, the sound of glass shattering.

After such a strong record the duet has no right to disband again

So, right at the moment when Lamb fans were grieving all over the world over what they saw as a final departure of the duet, Lamb came back with an amazingly good record. Just like the other four albums, 5 has an atmosphere that drags you in and makes you miss it once the listening is over. The CD’s first half, thank to the brilliant Another Language, quickly tunes you to a good mood. Working amidst snow, ice and cold winds, the musicians created a record with a heart of summer, light and bright music. Moderate length of most of the tracks will not allow you to get bored, and the songs are sequenced in such an order that the whole album is like a long story built out of many interesting and different episodes. 5 reproduces the effect of trance, a remarkable feature of Lamb’s first record. This is why the listener would get tired if the album was longer. Yet the musicians thought it through properly and designed a splendid music work that should not allow them to disband in the years to come. To emphasize their serious ambitions as a duet, Lamb announced a big tour that begins right after the release of this powerful album.