LORNA - Static Patterns & Souvenirs

Lorna are a quartet formed in Nottingham in 1997: Mark Rolfe (guitar), Sharon Cohen (vocals, piano, electronics), James Allen (bass) and Matt Harrison (drums, electronics). In 2000 the band released their debut EP, "Never Grow Old", on Intromit Records, and two years later put out their first full-length, "This Time, Each Year" (Pause Music). The band's music is a distillation of minimal chamber harmonies, often sighed with weightless grace, occasionally veering - without ever forcing it - towards the liturgical ecstasies reminiscent of certain slow-core (Low and Mazzy Star above all), and towards the radiant atmospheres of early-60s brill building pop and easy listening.

"Static Patterns & Souvenirs", released by Words On Music in 2005, is a worthy follow-up to that experience. On this new LP, more dreamy components come to the fore (following the line that, from Mazzy Star and Galaxie 500, looks back and reaches all the way to Eno-esque electrostatics), alongside more traditional ones (finely calibrated, eminently British folk-pop, never short of beguiling instrumental excursions). Bright Mazzy Star-style guitar arpeggios peek out right at the album's opening, "Understanding Heavy Metal, pts. 1 & 2", almost as if to bestow their artistic-creative blessing. The closing section is a successful chamber-music alchemy of xylophone, electro elements and trumpet.

"The Last Mosquito Fight Of Summer" is one of the record's gems. It kicks off with a dark, almost gothic bass line, before sinking into sunlit keyboards and ecstatic guitar phrasing, until Cohen's voice enters (harmonized Delgados/Mojave3-style with Rolfe's), taking on the main melodic burden. The chorus of catatonic warbling is even more melodic, and the quasi-symphonic coda rests on unison guitar and vibraphone lines, in a richly participatory arrangement. Equally catatonic is the following slowed-down, stripped-back, whispered country-rock of "Remarkable Things", built on pedal steel and banjo spinning out melancholy phrases: the effect is disorienting, especially in Cohen's refrain, but also in the coda, where flute and trumpet trace the same embroidery and melody.

The whole record is studded with effective touches. "Be Forever" opens with an American Analog Set-style arpeggio, its notes so clipped they sound almost atonal, until, in the second part, it's joined by brass and choral woodwinds and hushed keyboards, while the drums persist in their chiming trance. In the call-and-response of "Snow Song" it's keyboards and vibraphone that lead the way, while the guitar is left to close and polish off the harmony. "Will You Still Love Me Yesterday?" is a mournful folksong in the most formulaic sense of the term (a refrain sung in unison, an instrumental interlude with viola and electronic laments imitating a darkened theremin, an archaic slowing-down).

The record closes in style with two more gems. "He Dreams Of Spaceships", an acoustic jangle-pop tune of persuasive beauty that soars in a chorus echoed by trumpet and keyboards alongside Cohen's pure voice, with electro touches and a Belle & Sebastian feel, has a sonic structure and detail that isn't particularly elaborate, but - perhaps precisely because of that - is all the more effective. "Illuminations" starts from an enigmatic Papa M-style arpeggio, transfiguring into an emotional crescendo, and finally into a rhythmic acceleration that leads to an almost noir atmosphere (muted trumpet and nocturnal xylophone), in a sonic stillness that doesn't forget the best of Labradford.

The English quartet's second opus has endemic traits: the almost unbearable weight of songs strong in their crystalline transparency, and the emotion of harmonized textures born of a genuine yet mature innocence. The source material is nothing new, but the instrumental sensitivity and the skill in reworking it achieve a post-modern (and baroque) retro-futuristic union, together with an exhausting economy of expression. Assistance came from some members of labelmates Coastal. In December 2004 the band released a limited-edition EP on Winettka Records (a label of their own creation), the proceeds of which were donated to the "Animal Accident Rescue Unit", a volunteer association for animal welfare in Nottingham.

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30/04/2026