Photo by Shervin Lainez
Aly Spaltro tapped into a brand of nostalgia back in 2013 that was barely in anyone’s rearview mirror. The Maine native’s debut under her Lady Lamb the Beekeeper moniker, Ripely Pine, scratched an itch similar to the sort of early-aughts indie folk that has floundered in the last decade. It was the sort of saccharine albeit earnest music that became hard to escape back in 2005, when even an über-political label like Kill Rock Stars spent most of its time shilling Decemberists records.
There’s not really a sole juncture for this recent shift in sentiment, but most days, it feels like the fault of someone whose name rhymes with Shmarcus Shmumford. That particular type of contemporary “hey-ho” carpet-bagging has been undercutting an Appalachian style that, even when co-opted, should still maintain an intimacy that’s parlayed into sincerity. When Spaltro stops by the Turner Hall Ballroom Thursday in support of her sophomore record, the leaner and more muscular After, she may even double-down on candor.
“I made an effort on this album to be a little more personal,” Spaltro said. “I feel like my last album was personal and vulnerable, but at the heart of it was a little less about me and more about what I expected from other people. With this album, the vulnerability I wanted to bring to it had to stem from it being a little bit more about me.”
Subject matter aside, the road should seem a tad less lonesome for Lady Lamb’s upcoming set of dates, which will be Spaltro’s first time out with a fatter supporting band. For a songwriter’s whose imagery remains decidedly folk, the vexing dilemma that Spaltro’s conversation with the Shepherd Express keeps circling back toward is which times of the day she’s able to “make noise” since relocating to the cramped quarters of Brooklyn.
“I can’t really say whether Maine specifically is a place or New York specifically is a place that’s influenced what I write about more so just than the ways that I can make noise and be loud,” Spaltro said. “It has had a big impact on the way that I sing in that I’ve figured out ways to sing quietly and use different parts of my voice, which I haven’t before.”
Those shackles of city living manifest themselves throughout After—pretty much all for the better. As vibrant of a listening experience as Ripely Pine could be, it had a kitchen-sink quality to it. Spaltro’s much more judicious on After and she’s capable of honing in on a worthwhile chorus, something of a first for her.
“That was a conscious choice to just be more direct. There are a couple of choruses on the album, and for me, writing a chorus is really difficult. It does not come naturally at all,” Spaltro said. “It’s a natural thing for me to write a song that just meanders and doesn’t repeat itself, which I find value in. But because it’s so difficult for me to write choruses, I wanted to challenge myself to do that.”
Another fulcrum for After’s bluntness is Spaltro’s nimbler riff work, which gives the whole album some sharper corners. The central progression on “Heretic” bobs and weaves like “Devils Haircut”-era Beck. All of this comes as a conscious shift away from Ripely Pine’s genre trimmings and toward the more malleable tool that an electric guitar can be.
“I just over time realized that I’m really drawn to guitar-driven music. I love layering it,” Spaltro said. “There’s a song in this album with banjo on it and I’m even sort of moving away from that now, and I don’t really want to play that song live, because I don’t really connect to the banjo like I do the guitar.”
And that’s all just fine. The world needs Spaltro’s honesty more than it needs another band with a banjo.
Lady Lamb the Beekeeper headlines the Turner Hall Ballroom on Thursday, July 16 at 8 p.m. with openers Soul Low.
