Mary Lattimore - Quintana

September 15, 2019 - Self-released

Harpist Mary Lattimore slipped a new single into the ether this September via her Bandcamp page, and she thought we wouldn’t notice. ‘Quintana’ is a fifteen-minute amble through a grassy seaside mountain—windblown, haunting and exposed. It’s a footnote from her 2018 album Hundreds of Days, leftover but not forgotten. Her ideas in the beginning of the track are a bit awkwardly juxtaposed, especially the synth she floats underneath her string-work that sounds like a swarm of digital bees. At first, it shallows out her prowess almost to the depth of an 8-bit video game soundtrack. After minute three, however, her logic starts to reveal itself, the synths feel more at home with the strings, and I become lost in the connections of the auditory landscape. Perhaps the revelations that follow those first three minutes are extra sweetened by moving through their discovery of the remaining twelve. I will never know because I am imperfect, and though I try—hard—I can’t read Lattimore’s mind. ☔