LUMP

LUMP - LUMP
Critic Score
Based on 26 reviews
2018 Ratings: #221 / 890
User Score
Based on 237 ratings
2018 Rank: #326
Liked by 13 people
June 1, 2018 / Release Date
LP / Format
Dead Oceans / Label
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CRITIC REVIEWS

100
The Arts Desk

What LUMP lacks in running time, it more than makes up for in spine-tingling creativity and beauty.

85
The Line of Best Fit

Recorded in Lindsay’s London studio, Marling and Lindsay’s meeting of minds produced the cerebral LUMP, seven long, idiosyncratic, frequently ambient tracks.

83
A.V. Club
All that surrealist pop plays out over 30 minutes of interlocking songs, enough to keep you thoroughly entranced and get you hoping LUMP might soon inspire its hosts to deliver more.
80
God Is in the TV

Undoubtedly made in its creators’ image, LUMP is an eccentric but forthright child, one that will never pander to peer-group popularity, but will always gain acceptance through intelligence, sensitivity and honesty combined.

80
Albumism

LUMP is dream-like. The listener slips into the album quickly, becoming engrossed in Marling and Lindsay’s surreal landscape. It’s over almost as soon as it’s begun, shimmering in the background with catchy hooks that follow you throughout the day.

80
The Telegraph
A side project should be challenging and unusual; it should stretch the boundaries of the artists involved. Since that is what this characterful, strong, self-contained album does, you really have to like it or lump it.
80
Northern Transmissions
For this team-up between Laura Marling and Mike Lindsay, the pair deliver a range of experimental and pop-infused writing that will certainly shock you. Given how indulgent the record is however, it can hit some abrasive reaches as well as stagnant loops just as often as iconic explorations in sound.
80
The Independent
Both artists sound far more liberated here than on each of their separate solo projects; it’s a collaboration many will want to continue.
80
The Guardian

However littered with in-jokes Lump may be, the songs that make up the duo’s debut album are never alienating. Instead, the record – which is underpinned by Lindsay’s ambient sound cycle – rings with an unusual but uncomplicated beauty.

80
Loud and Quiet
The result, what the pair are calling a “cyclical drone journey album”, is an intoxicating listen, a record that baffles as much as delights and revels in its weirder moments.
80
DIY
A perfectly contained six tracks, ‘LUMP’ trades Laura’s signature, breezy acoustic guitars for swelling synths, and pulls apart and rearranges her traditional song structures like they’re playdough.
80
NME
Laura Marling and Mike Lindsay's drone-folk collaboration is a lovable fluffy yeti of a record.
80
Drowned in Sound
LUMP is its own entity, a synthetic hirsute creature born in Seuss’s whimsical wasteland – and while this first album only grants us a fleeting glimpse, Marling and Lindsay convey startling visions through their new vessel.
77
Pitchfork
The contrast between the amorphous band name and its sterile classification as a product mirrors the music throughout the record, which wraps prickly observations about lifestyle consumerism in bales of gorgeous melody and grumbling dissonance.
76
Sputnikmusic
I imagine this is the kind of album Fiona Apple would make if she spent a few weeks sleeping on The Books’ couch.
75
The 405

LUMP is a creation that both composers stressed passed through them and they look upon parentally and this is evident as an articulation of the artistic detail of the contemporary, through Lindsay’s colourful soundscapes.

75
Under the Radar

LUMP, it seems, is a creature of its own will: a living, breathing piece of art.

72
GIGsoup
Its six songs spin a web through childhood fairytales, a walk through a forest scored by chiming woodwinds, horns and dark synths.
70
The Needle Drop
This debut collaboration between British singer-songwriter Laura Marling and Tunng co-founder Mike Lindsay delivers some texturally unique folktronica.
70
Gigwise
Encompassing militant wobbles of acoustics, LUMP tells the story of contemporary music, with a dash of unusual neo-psychedelic sounds.
70
musicOMH
The tracks ... balance deep, droning synths and fuzzy percussion with Marling’s folkish phrasing and occasional, vaulting shifts in pitch, to not much effect.
60
The Observer

Lindsay’s wonky music ... benefits hugely from the strength of Marling’s voice and persona.

Quet
81

They make THE CREDITS unique. I think that’s all I need to say.

MarkCooper
75

Laura Marling's weirdest lyrics to me, and Mike Lindsay's best-produced project to date. The two unexpectedly created an album with such a strong cinematic feeling (Late to the Flight for example), something I would never have thought. Marling alone couldn't be farther from a cinematic sound, while Lindsay's production is really corny a lot of the times. Yet somehow LUMP exists, and some of these songs are seriously fantastic.

Felix_96
80

8/10

exceptional

Fav tracks: <all songs>

Felix_96
80

8/10

exceptional

Fav tracks: <all songs>

TommyToons
70

LUMP is short for Lil Pump

73

Nice

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Added on: April 30, 2018