Curbside Lambsear

Introducing Curbside Lambsear , the new project from the Umlauts' and Caroline's Magdelena McLean and Annabelle Mödlinger.

They released their first EP 'Put Rings On All My Fingers To Weigh Down My Hands' via Scenic Route in September. They're described by Shaad in Pitchfork as 'wordy' in a kind of Joycean manner: 'The construction practically encourages you to swing it as you say it out loud'. It's language for the sound of the words, for the sensation. The lines on the opener are used as the example: 'No ordinary word makes the world fit right into the palms of me/No ordinary word makes the world makes the world makes the world'. It's a wonderful lyric that expresses a dissatisfaction with language as a vehicle to describe reality. It seems the interest lays in playing with the sounds of words and phrases, letting their meanings seep out and resonate around you rather than a didactic clobbering a la Yard Act.

In the EP then, we can read a tension around the ability of language– a paranoia over whether it can really express what we want it to – and this is where the music comes in. “Jjochstubn” is a fight between noise and sound, a softly enveloping interference smothers a distant, laconic drum beat. It has the feeling of being in some kind of modern industrial centre, HVAC shimmering away quietly above your conversation. The vocals here are made rhythmic with an aggressive tremolo, aligning “vocals” more with the other instruments than the front and center semantic carrier we might be used to.

The actual brilliance of PROAMFTWDMH is that in the second half of this atmospheric deconstruction of song, Jjochstubn breaks out into a supremely hummable hook, with the two vocal lines rising and ducking over one another in thrilling motion. Curbside Lambsear have managed to make a record that straddles experimental and pop sensibility in an astonishing way. Man The Door will be greeted by similar enthusiasm from die-hards and coworkers alike. It would be a challenge for anyone to listen to the song and not sing it idly for several days afterwards.

Curbside Lambsear - St Vincent's Chapel - Feb 9th 2027. NOTAFLOF