The best side projects have the freedom of a casual fling, freed from the weight of interaction with a main-squeeze muse. Just so with this light, playful offering from Mike Lindsay, of eclectic psych-folkies Tunng, and Laura Marling: the pair met on the bowling lanes at a Neil Young aftershow, and Marling, lured by Lindsay’s promises of “strange, wonky music”, signed on to supply spontaneous, subconsciously strange words.
Lucid dreaming is the appropriate theme of Late to the Flight, with its downy-soft layers of textures, languid twangs and avian flutes. “Paint dots on your wrist to see me in your dreams,” Marling promises, her voice sleepily luxurious, and these seven tracks exist in a charmed reverie. Her staccato, very English vocal has a touch of the Robert Wyatt about it over the warm, droney buzz of May I Be the Light, while Rolling Thunder flirts with darkness.
Marling seems freed to take on surprising guises: Curse of the Contemporary finds her in comfortable role as Joni-ish stardust priestess among spidery twangs, but the graceful delirium of Shake Your Shelter casts her as fretful hermit crab on “a beach full of empty shells”. Lindsay’s wonky music, meanwhile – he plays most of the instruments – benefits hugely from the strength of Marling’s voice and persona. The only bum note is that there isn’t more Lump to treasure – but then maybe Marling and Lindsay are smart enough to realise that pushing it further would break the spell.
