Music preview: Lamb

The re-emergence of electronic duo Lamb after a five-year hiatus has not only given singer/songwriter Lou Rhodes and beat master Andy Barlow a new sense of purpose, but an opportunity to start things completely afresh.

Formed in Manchester in 1995 and initially aiming to become part of a burgeoning new local break-beat scene lead by groups like A Guy Called Gerald, Lamb quickly found their niche blending elements of jazz, drum 'n' bass and trip-hop with a specific emphasis on intelligent, thought-provoking songwriting. Probably best known for hits like "Gabriel" and "Gorecki," the latter a masterful piece of work inspired by Polish composer Henryk Gorecki's The Symphony of Sorrowful Songs, Lamb's oeuvre more than hinted at the depth of Rhodes' heartfelt, passionate lyrics. "If I should die this very moment, I wouldn't fear. For I've never known completeness like being here wrapped in the warmth of you, loving every breath of you," she sings on "Gorecki."

"It was one of those perfect moments," Rhodes tells The Prague Post. "I had just got together with someone, and I was falling in love. He played me the Symphony of Sorrowful Songs, and it was a case of us lying together and listening to this incredible music, and feeling that I could quite happily die at that moment because it was just one of those perfect moments - moments which if we could make them last forever, we would."

Following the release of Between Darkness & Wonder in 2004, Lamb surprised many by announcing they were to split, citing personality conflicts, among other issues.  

"I think it was essential that we split at that stage for a whole number of reasons. We felt that creatively we had taken a number of wrong turns," Rhodes says. "I don't think we were conscious of it at the time, but we'd come to a kind of stopping point where we didn't know where else to go creatively. Lamb was always about being innovative and having something to say, but there wasn't anything calling us to write a new album."

Consequently, Rhodes decided to relocate with her two children to a commune in the Surrey countryside to recover from the breakup of her marriage. Here she was able to fulfill her ambition of making acoustic music, the highpoint being her 2006 Mercury Music Prize-nominated album, Beloved One. Meanwhile, Barlow kept himself busy with his own solo project, Lowb, as well as lending a production hand to the likes of Fink.

But the duo decided to reconcile their differences when asked to play the Big Chill Festival in 2009 along with a number of other shows.  

"We thought, 'To hell with it; let's just see how it goes,' " Rhodes says. "We also thought our music had become far too complex over the years, and that we kind of wanted to strip it back to our original principles. It was all about keeping things simple and the essence of Lamb just being Andy's electronica and my voice."

That the group stripped things back to basics is pretty evident on Lamb's latest recording, simply titled 5. Dark and raw, and owing more to Lamb's eponymously titled 1995 debut album than any subsequent releases, songs like "Butterfly Effect" and "Strong the Root" show a return to form. The oft-used electro trip hop tag is truly outdated, as 5 probably fits more snugly in with the latest batch of post dub-step experimentalists, Mount Kimbie, SBTRKT and James Blake.  

As for lyrical content, writer's block was a bit of a hindrance before Barlow "knocked any such qualms out of the water," Rhodes said. Prompted, the singer opted for deeper soul-searching armed with a completely new palette to fill.

"With 5, there was no love song waiting to be written on this album," she says. "I'd come to a point where I had suffered from serious heartbreak and kind of come through the other side of that really questioning love itself. The songs have a real authenticity about them because I had to completely reinvent how I write songs, and in a sense they're more immediate than before because I'm almost writing about the process of writing songs, about that question of, 'Where am I? What am I doing with my life?' "  

5 is a promising album. Let's hope Lamb stay the course a little longer this time.

James Scanlon can be reached at
features@praguepost.com