Songs for a sweaty summer night

"Manchester is a hotbed of musical activity," says Lamb vocalist/co-founder Lou Rhodes. "It would be hard to live in Manchester and not be exposed to a real broad cross-section of music. It's very much a part of the roots of the city, and continues to be its major export."

With one ear tuned to Manchester's late '80s and early '90s pirate radio blasting the emerging polyrhythmic electronic style soon to be known as drum 'n' bass, and the other tuned to English folk music, Rhodes joined forces with producer Andy Barlow in 1994 to form Lamb. Smoothing the mix of their trip-hop signature sound was an unofficial third band member, double-bass player John Thorne. An admitted acolyte of former Pentangle/Nick Drake bassist Danny Thomson, Thorne brought a convincing jazz/folk spine to Lamb's sparse vocals-meet-rave-era electronica sound.

The brilliant admix of Barlow's production stealth and Rhodes' songwriting incorporate influences as far-ranging as Jungle, Goriecki and England's second-wave folk revival, and quickly garnered a global audience. Although their early sound has been described as favorably raw, Lamb's third CD, 2001's What Sound (on the Mercury/Koch label), which included production help from former Seal producer and Björk collaborator Guy Stigsworth, was described by London's Time Out as "a flawless blend of baffled beats, intriguing textured ambience and lush, soulful melodicism."

Given Lamb's foundation in Barlow's electronics and all the trip-hop comparisons, it's easy to overlook the solid craftsmanship in the band's work. Speaking to The Prague Post from her home in southwest England, Rhodes described their stylistic scope by saying, "When you listen to Lamb, you might think of it as stepping outside the traditional song structure, because of the very experimental production. But, actually, if you strip it back to the songs, you can hear how I'm quite a traditionalist in the way I write. For me, songs have a definite structure that I very rarely stray from."

Rhodes' traditionalist leanings provide the ever-present tension in Lamb's sound, though the finished product can also go in other directions. The opening track of their 2003 CD Between Darkness and Wonder highlights Barlow's use of orchestral colors against the more free-form potentials of Rhodes' voice. Recalling those sessions, Rhodes remarks, "If you look at a track like "Darkness" ... that's not a traditional song structure - it's more of a poem set to music. So there are definite exceptions to the rule. One of the things that set Lamb apart over the years from other acts where you have vocals with electronic music is that most of what Lamb did was centered around songs rather than just putting a vocal over a beat."

Discussing Lamb's current direction, Rhodes says, "When we decided to do a summer of Lamb shows, we decided to strip it back to first principles in a way, and go back to the ethos of the first album. So the lineup is the original lineup - myself, Andy and John Thorne on double bass. And although the songs have stayed the same, Andy's production work on the programming side has changed. Because technology changes so rapidly, the songs started to sound dated. So Andy has had a lot of fun looking at the songs afresh.

"Over the years," she adds, "we probably got overly complex. This process has been great in stripping out from the songs what wasn't needed, and toughening them up."

From their eponymous 1996 release on Fontana, with tracks like "Goriecki" and "Cotton Wool" that became club chill room faves, to 1999's "Fear of Fours," which hit their highest Billboard rating, Lamb has pursued a diverse trip-hop path that sometimes crosses the atmospherics of the Cocteau Twins with the bare voltage of Portishead. Listening to the group's dynamic catalog is like reading a book in which each chapter says something new while leaving the reader hungry for more.

Lamb's next chapter, as performed in Prague this week, should likewise leave the audience both satisfied and eagerly awaiting the next page.

Darrell Jónsson can be reached at
features@praguepost.com