American harpist and composer Mary Lattimore will release a new album on Ghostly International.
Goodbye, Hotel Arkada comprises six sprawling pieces shaped by change, celebrating and mourning “the tragedy and beauty of the ephemeral.” She recorded and edited them over two years.
The album remains rooted in improvisation while glistening as “the most refined and robust” in Lattimore’s decade-long catalog. It features Lol Tolhurst (The Cure), Meg Baird, Rachel Goswell (Slowdive), Roy Montgomery, Samara Lubelski, and Walt McClements.
For the title and inspiration, Lattimore’s mind returned to the island of Hvar in Croatia, where there’s a big hotel called the Hotel Arkada which has been hosting holiday-goers for decades in a great way.
“I walked around the lobby and the empty ballrooms and it looked like a well-worn, well-loved place,” Lattimore recalls. “My friend Stacey who lives there told me to ‘say goodbye to Hotel Arkada, it might not be here when you get back’ and I heard soon after that it was actually going to be renovated in a very crisp, modern way.”
Lattimore became fixated on the ingredients that make a place special: the chandeliers, the patterned bedspreads, the echoes of its intangible charm—and how when those leave this world, as they inevitably always will, it feels important to memorialize them, “to bottle it for a brief second.”
To coincide with the announcement, Lattimore has shared “And Then He Wrapped His Wings Around Me” alongside a video directed by Rachael Pony Cassells.
For the track, Lattimore looked to songwriter Meg Baird, her collaborator on 2018’s Ghost Forests, and composer Walt McClements, who she’s toured and performed alongside.
As a child, Lattimore won a drawing contest through a country radio station and got to see Sesame Street live in Asheville. She and her mother were invited backstage, and there the benevolent icon Big Bird “gave me an incredible hug with his scratchy yellow wings,” Lattimore says.
The trio “channel the enveloping warmth of that portrait,” we’re told, “the feeling of innocent escape, flying away towards a childhood dream that is just out of reach, surreal, and tinged with sadness.”
Tracklisting
01. And Then He Wrapped His Wings Around Me feat. Meg Baird and Walt McClements
02. Arrivederci feat. Lol Tolhurst
02. Blender in a Blender feat. Roy Montgomery
04. Music for Applying Shimmering Eye Shadow
05. Horses, Glossy on the Hill
06. Yesterday’s Parties feat. Rachel Goswell and Samara Lubelski
Goodbye, Hotel Arkada LP is scheduled for October 6 release. Meanwhile, you a stream “And Then He Wrapped His Wings Around Me” in full via the player below and pre-order here.
