Mary Lattimore - Goodbye, Hotel Arkada (Inkwell Vinyl LP)

"And Then He Wrapped His Wings Around Me," Lattimore looks to two of her closest friends - songwriter Meg Baird, her collaborator on 2018's Ghost Forests, and accordionist composer Walt McClements, who she's toured and performed alongside - to surface a core memory. As a kid, Lattimore won a drawing contest through a country radio station and got to see Sesame Street Live! In Asheville. She and her mom were invited backstage, and there the benevolent icon Big Bird "gave me an incredible hug with his scratchy yellow wings." The trio channel the enveloping warmth of that portrait, the feeling of innocent escape, flying away towards a childhood dream that is just out of reach, surreal, and tinged with sadness. In a rare vocal passage in Lattimore's library, Baird softly hums with the rolling washes of harp above McClements' tranquil drone; just for a moment, we are held in a sublime canary yellow embrace.