LUMP Animal
LUMP slink through the darker regions of the mind on Animal, their sophomore album.
“It took one God seven days to go insane”, sings Laura Marling on ‘Bloom At Night’, Animal’s brutal opening track. LUMP’s second album grips onto primordial fears, with Marling’s earnest lyrical work piercing through Mike Lindsay’s electronic veils. It’s a smouldering journey through the mind’s darker jennels.
The tracks on Animal are like the bevels of a finely carved piece. ‘Paradise’ ransacks the BBC’s arsenal of synths and wave generators from the eighties, laying an atmosphere while Marling’s vocals float through an abandoned corridor. Deep angles can be found on ‘Red Snakes’ and ‘Bloom At Night’, both deftly moving between pastoral lamentations and folktronica meditations. The seething atmosphere of ‘Animal’ is juxtaposed with ‘Climb Every Wall’. The contrast in moods intertwines in a way that captures perfectly how anger can lead to a moment of deep reflection.
As this album spins back from its conclusion to track number one, I keep thinking of a word. After a year of madness, this word – “languishing” – is bandied about describing that foggy state of mind most of us feel. No motivation, no hopes, no concentration, no dreams. As Animal’s final credits are spoken as an outro in ‘Phantom Limb’, I wonder if we can find a way to clear out this rut; a eureka moment found through electronic-heavy pastoral hymns that will lead us through the fog into John Constable’s picturesque fields.
