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Jul 27, 2021 By Mark Redfern Photography by Tamsin Topolski

LUMP (aka Laura Marling and Tunng’s Mike Lindsay) are releasing a new album, Animal, this Friday via Partisan/Chrysalis. Now they have shared the album’s fourth single, “Gamma Ray,” via a video featuring the band’s big colorful LUMP creature. Watch it below.

In a press release Lindsay had this to say about the song: “There’s this part from the second half where you hear a voice, and in my mind that was the LUMP creature speaking to us saying ‘Excuse me, I don’t think we’ve been introduced’, and then it does this kind of ‘Ahhh!’ sound, that’s LUMP going through my Eventide H949 Harmonizer. I think that’s how you say ‘LUMP’ in LUMP language. Laura also uses the word ‘gawped,’ which is brilliant.”

Marling adds: “The lyrics are all just nonsense writing, but I always had in my mind a story I’d heard about my dad’s cousin dying. He died very young, he committed suicide sadly, obviously long before I was born. He was incredibly good looking and everyone loved him, and when they tolled the bell at his funeral two of my dad’s sisters fainted. They were so overcome. ‘Gawping’ comes from French singer Georges Brassens, who did a really weird song called ‘Brave Margot,’ and in the translation there is something about the men ‘gawping.’”

Previously LUMP shared a video for the album’s title track, “Animal.” “Animal” was #1 on our Songs of the Week list. Then they shared the album’s second single, “Climb Every Wall,” via a playful video for it (the song also made our Songs of the Week list). Then they shared “We Cannot Resist,” via a video for the song (which again was #1 on our Songs of the Week list).

Animal follows the band’s self-titled debut album, LUMP, which came out in 2018 via Dead Oceans.

“LUMP is so the repository for so many things that I’ve had in my mind and just don’t fit anywhere in that way,” said Marling in a previous press release. “They don’t have to totally make narrative sense, but weirdly they end up making narrative sense in some way.”

Marling’s last album, the acclaimed Song For Our Daughter, came out last year via Partisan/Chrysalis. Tunng also released a new album, DEAD CLUB, last year via Full Time Hobby. Marling was working on both Song For Our Daughter and the LUMP album at the same time.

“It became a very different thing about escaping a persona that has become a burden to me in some way. It was like putting on a superhero costume,” she said, adding that sometimes it feels as if she might be “edging Laura Marling off a cliff as much as I can and putting LUMP in the center.”

Animal was recorded at Lindsay’s home studio in Margate, Kent. A big feature of the sessions was his Eventide H949 Harmonizer, which is the same pitch-shifter David Bowie used on Low. In order to make sure her lyrics were more spontaneous, Marling would show up at the studio without hearing Lindsay’s music ahead of time.

“There’s a little bit of a theme of hedonism on the album, of desires running wild,” said Lindsay. “We created LUMP as a sort of persona and an idea and a creature. Through LUMP we find our inner animal, and through that animal we travel into a parallel universe.”

Read our 2018 interview with LUMP.

Marling and Lindsay met when Marling supported Neil Young at a London show in June 2016 and they discovered that they were mutual fans of each other’s work. The collaboration grew from there.

LUMP UK Tour Dates:

31st August – Gorilla, Manchester
2nd September – Brudenell Social Club, Leeds
3rd September – Trinity, Bristol
5th September – Patterns, Brighton
6th September – Scala, London

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