Juggling multiple artistic endeavors is something done effectively by very few—one usually falls to the wayside while energies are focused on another, or they come and go in cycles with significant gaps in between, leaving followers to wonder if they’re still active. For Alyse Lamb, however, an equal dispersion of creative output between projects is not only a means of fulfilling her time, it’s an art in and of itself, which she achieves beautifully. A new, brilliant EP from the collaborative trio Parlor Walls shows that, after having released a record earlier this year with her mainstay band, Eula, Lamb’s nowhere near exhausted her artistic vision, or spreading it thing, but rather, she’s thriving off its expansion.
Entitled Cut, the EP incorporates moody guitar haze and Chris Mulligan’s throbbing drum parts, underlying [also, Mulligan’s] abstruse keys and Lamb’s vocal prescience. Kate Mahonty on Saxophone adds unheard-of granularity to the tone, the fiery buzz engulfing a manmade satellite upon its entrance to or exit from the atmosphere. Tracks transition from the manic and agitated crash-landings exerting gravity’s force, on opener “Bloodsport” and “The Key”, to the cooled and wondrous breakthroughs into the weightlessness of solar systems, as on “Me Me My” and “Sundress”. A great middle ground is met upon in “Birthday”, which closes the album, perhaps shifting between planetary and interstellar, in oscillating indecision. Cut is out now on Alyse Lamb’s own art collective, Famous Swords, another indicator at her rebellion against idle time.
