Mary Lattimore & Walt McClements to Debut New Duo Album 'Rain On The Road'

Thrill Jockey have signed new duo Mary Lattimore and Walt McClements. The two celebrated Los Angeles-based composers will release their debut collaboration Rain on the Road on May 10th - an album that blossomed out of time spent on the road together, capturing the liminal existence of touring life in deeply cinematic compositions.

Alongside the album, the new duo share resplendent new single "Nest of Earrings," a perfect capture of the album's vivid atmospherics that sees Lattimore and McClements smelt manipulated harp, field recordings and synthesizer into shimmering silver. 

Mary Lattimore and Walt McClements are two of contemporary music's most renowned innovators. Each has managed to expand the perception of their instrument's capabilities. Lattimore inventive harp processing and looping has brought the instrument to a new audience. Her prolific run of celestial solo albums and evocative film scores have redefined the instrument in the modern consciousness.

Her genre-agnostic collaborations include work with Kurt Vile, Steve Gunn, Jeff Zeigler, Meg Baird, Julianna Barwick and Thurston Moore. McClements, who tours as a member of Weyes Blood, is an acclaimed composer in his own right, sculpting glacial atmospherics from the accordion. The Los Angeles-based duo became quick friends on overlapping tours, with a shared drive to push the sonic possibilities of their instruments and shared roots in North Carolina.

Recorded in the cozy setting of McClements' apartment during a rainy December in LA, Rain on the Road finds an equilibrium between two usually disparate states of being for musicians: life on the road and life in the studio.

Lattimore explains: “I can hear both the road-selves and the home-selves in these recordings, the two sides that don't always get to meet.” McClements elaborates: “the rain both invokes serenity, as in the perfect peaceful drizzle at the mountain cabin, but can also be ominous… like when you are running late for a show, driving through a thunderstorm.” The album unfurls as a series of sonic vignettes, rolling landscapes hewn from longform improvisations for harp and accordion. The duo's mastery of their respective instruments and their collective explorative nature belies the delicate complexity of their music. Their humility and their joy permeate every note making Rain on the Road – a beautiful listen. Mary Lattimore describes it simply as “letting melodies unspool with your close friend, no rush, nowhere to really be.” 

Ahead of the release of Rain on the Road, Lattimore and McClements will premiere the album at Zebulon in Los Angeles, CA on May 8th.

Photo by Rachael Cassells

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