Lady Lamb @ The Echo LA

By Gia Vescovi-Chiordi

Lady Lamb (formerly Lady Lamb the Beekeeper) is the stage name of Aly Spaltro, who I had the pleasure of seeing at The Echo in Los Angeles recently. I’ll admit, I hadn’t heard much of Spaltro before heading into the Echo that Thursday night, and I fostered an expectation that I wouldn’t be surprised if the place was only full of regulars who would have been there anyways. Huzzah! I was wrong. It happens often.

The place was full of offbeat, mostly flannel clad (myself included) young people bristling with excitement, who not only knew of Lady Lamb, but knew her well – a fact which amazed me later when she informed the crowd that this was her first performance in LA. She was already an established presence, something I gathered simply from listening to the chatter around me, rife with gushing expectation and multiple ‘I love her!’s’ being thrown around casually. I was glad to be there in the middle of that gentle bearded hipster crowd, sipping a PBR and feeling at ease. There was no playing the cool game that night, which happens so very often in Los Angeles. Lady Lamb brings out a good group.

A candid performer who began mixing, experimenting and self teaching music while working long hours at the local independent video rental store in Brunswick, Maine (is this a movie Ellen Page has starred in?), Spaltro weaves the intimate with the unpretentious, mixing existentialism with frank, singular emotion in her songs. I mulled over that small blurb of information I had read about her while background music was playing, the band deftly setting up and people happily chatting about this and that. Then it became evident the set was about to start and it became deathly, hear-a-pin-drop quiet. Like, riding four floors in an elevator with two other people quiet, where you don’t even want to breathe. It was almost terrifying how much power Spaltro had over the crowd without even having done anything yet. Please don’t try your hand at Imperialism, Aly Spaltro.

But Lady Lamb (full band behind her, standing tall just above five feet in a leather jacket and loveworn Chucks) started with a bang, and it was immediately fun, relaxed and carefree. The first thing I really noticed was the impressive command Spaltro had over her vocals – honeyed and strong, with tiny nuances and lilts that must have been practiced but were an entirely natural extension of her performance. How large those lungs must be! People were singing along, transfixed, like they’d heard these songs a thousand times. The crowd warmed up quickly and even started to shimmy a bit, though never entirely breaking out – which is alright – I understand the spell they were under. Spaltro graciously accepted the many ‘I think I love you’s!’ and an overly drawn out ‘Whooooooo!’ that garnered some awkward laughter (I’m looking at you, girl in front of me that recorded every song in its entirety on your phone), and even gracefully ignored a few misguided shouts, instead asking the crowd if anyone was from Maine to which many replied, and through this cheeky interlude Spaltro caught a few of them lying. It was all very familiar and slightly goofy. Then she pulled out her banjo while the crowd remained in its’ characteristic death hush, to which she said “Thank you for not automatically cheering when I pulled out the banjo, because I feel pigeonholed as fuck when I do it.” which fetched a huge cheer before diving into ‘Violet Clementine’.

Lady Lamb is not your everyday coffee-shop-delta-blues channeling manic pixie dream girl caricature of a woman with a guitar. She uses her lyricism powerfully, going from off-the-wall in the vein of Johanna Newsom or Warpaint to as honest and simply candid as Jenny Lewis or Ben Folds. Spinning golden infused symbolism (‘In your eyes streaks of canary yellow’) in juxtaposition with relatable, everyman lyrics (‘I know already how much TV will fail to comfort me in your absence’) one moment and then diving into subtle surrealism blended with anatomy, talking of bringing blood into chambers and taking ribs apart the next. There were elements of folk anchored down by solid indie rock, great use of repetition, chanting, and the occasional shout interspersed with a few moments of soft harmony. Lady Lamb enshrouds and showcases an extremely individual process that you don’t see often, or at least more than once every few years. Commanding listeners with lyrics that peel any heightened sense of self you may have had and bringing you back to the basics, (keep your silence golden/and words important/you’re only a handsome animal) Lady Lamb is a catchy and spiritual tonic that’s worth a listen.