American harpist and composer Mary Lattimore announces her new album Goodbye, Hotel Arkada, due October 6 via Ghostly International. Through evocative, emotionally resonant music, Goodbye, Hotel Arkada speaks not just for its beloved namesake — a hotel in Croatia facing renovation — but for a universal loss that is shared. Six sprawling pieces shaped by change; nothing will ever be the same, and here, the artist, evolving in synthesis, celebrates and mourns the tragedy and beauty of the ephemeral, all that is lived and lost to time. To coincide with the announcement, the first single from the record ‘And Then He Wrapped His Wings Around Me’ is online now alongside a video directed by Rachael Pony Cassells.
For ‘And Then He Wrapped His Wings Around Me,’ Lattimore looks to two of her closest friends — songwriter Meg Baird, her collaborator on 2018’s Ghost Forests, and accordionist composer Walt McClements, who she’s toured and performed alongside — to surface a core memory. As a child, Lattimore won a drawing contest through a country radio station and got to see Sesame Street Live! in Asheville. She and her mom were invited backstage, and there the benevolent icon Big Bird “gave me an incredible hug with his scratchy yellow wings.” The trio channel the enveloping warmth of that portrait, the feeling of innocent escape, flying away towards a childhood dream that is just out of reach, surreal, and tinged with sadness. In a rare vocal passage in Lattimore’s library, Baird softly hums with the rolling washes of harp above McClements’ tranquil drone; just for a moment, we are held in a sublime canary yellow embrace.
Documented and edited in uncharacteristically measured sessions over the course of two years, Goodbye, Hotel Arkada remains rooted in improvisation while glistening as the most refined and robust in Lattimore’s decade-long catalog. It finds her communing with friends, contemporaries, and longtime influences, in full stride yet slowing down to nurture songs in new ways. The cast includes Lol Tolhurst (The Cure), Meg Baird, Rachel Goswell (Slowdive), Roy Montgomery, Samara Lubelski, and Walt McClements.
Goodbye, Hotel Arkada:
- And Then He Wrapped His Wings Around Me (feat. Meg Baird and Walt McClements)
- Arrivederci (feat. Lol Tolhurst)
- Blender in a Blender (feat. Roy Montgomery)
- Music for Applying Shimmering Eye Shadow
- Horses, Glossy on the Hill
- Yesterday’s Parties (feat. Rachel Goswell and Samara Lubelski)
