LUMP perform new album 'Animal' at Rough Trade East

To mark the release of their sophomore album, Laura Marling and Tunng’s Mike Lindsay took to the stage at Rough Trade East to perform just a few tracks as collaborative duo LUMP.

The follow up to what was supposed to be a one-off collaboration between Laura Marling and Tunng's Mike Lindsay, LUMP's sophomore album 'Animal' is 45 minutes of part psychedelic, part electronic madness. Merging Marling's breathy vocal and singer-songwriter roots with Linday's immersive soundscapes, the duo create a sound perhaps best described as "folktronica." Drum machine heavy and laden with echoing backing vocals, the album is atmospheric to say the least.

On first listen, you might wonder how LUMP would go about playing the album live, given its vastly intricate instrumentals. However, taking to the stage at Rough Trade East last week, the duo pulled it off like no other, giving a truly rip-roaring performance. Opening the show with the album’s first track ‘Bloom At Night’, LUMP played through just a few tracks from the recently released ‘Animal’, including the title track ‘Gamma Ray’, ‘Paradise’, and the second single released ‘Climb Every Wall.’ They also added two fan favourites from their self-titled debut, ‘Curse of the Contemporary’ and ‘Shake Your Shelter.’ 

Merging their set list into one continuous soundscape, the duo - accompanied by their drummer and bassist - played through the selected tracks uninterrupted, only pausing briefly before their last song to thank the audience for coming.

Drawing the show to a close with a lengthy and body-shakingly loud jam-out to ‘Shake Your Shelter’, the band gave an immense finale before Marling, enigmatic as ever, gave the audience a single wave and stepped off stage. Lindsay, still fading out the instrumental, was more comfortable addressing the audience directly, grabbing the mic and singing enthusiastic thank you’s to the crowd. As the first of a stream of tour dates for the duo, their Rough Trade performance was the perfect introduction to all there is to look forward to with LUMP. 

With lyrics that are undeniably introspective, being largely influenced by psychoanalysis (a subject Marling has been working towards on her  Master’s Degree during lockdown). Additionally, the duo took influence from the lyrics of David Sedaris and George Brassens, the breathy vocals of Charlotte Gainsburg and, most peculiarly, the Saga Comics, with Marling joking that the duo would be available to soundtrack when someone inevitably makes a film adaptation.

Marling has always maintained a level of enigma within her music -  solo or otherwise -  never addressing the listener too directly. However, LUMP sees her switch the poetic for the peculiar with lines such as “came here to swing dicks” and “legs crossed to prevent emasculation”, showing the project to be a lyrical deep-dive into her own psyche and perhaps more personal than even her solo work. “I’m rushing through lyrics without much conscious editing so some of the weirder depths of my psyche are in full view in LUMP” she said during an Instagram Q&A to mark the release of ‘Animal.’ 

The peculiarity of LUMP’s lyrics, however, allows listeners to form their own interpretations of each song’s meaning. To me, the album's fourth track ‘Climb Every Wall’ seemed, perhaps too simply, to be about a damaging, yet somewhat addictive, relationship, expressed via lyrics “Lately you’ve been thinking about leaving, to try and wipe the heart from your sleeve” and “lost in the art of devouring will kill as much as keep you alive.” To Marling though, the song takes on a different meaning entirely: “I literally pulled the door of my bunker studio off, flew backwards across the room and had a mild spiritual experience, having knocked my back into alignment and thinking about how perfect the analogy was”, she wrote on Instagram. “I finally had a room of my own and with my own force, I managed to lock myself into it”.