Cincinnati duo Lung may have minimal personnel and instrumentation, but their sound is nothing shy of colossal. Dark, sludgy, and oddly neoclassical, their tunes are like the echoes of a rockslide crashing down a cavern’s walls. For proof, check out the live video of “Spiders”, a studio version of which has a home on forthcoming sophomore LP All the King’s Horses.
Built on a foundation of Kate Wakefield’s distorted buzz-sawing cello and Daisy Caplan’s pummeling drums, the song pulls no punches with its sonic assault, deftly walking the line of experimental and accessible. Murky low-end and distorted washes are tempered by Wakefield’s vocals, by turns lilting and frenzied. The pair’s synchronicity is on display as the tune abruptly shifts its time and subtle melody, the cello strings scuttling like the spindly legs of the song’s titular arachnid.
Near the 2:43 mark, Wakefield showcases her vocal range with some unearthly ululating. Being a former opera singer, her chilling vibrato howls like a mix of a theremin and banshee wailing on a windswept moor.
“The song, ‘Spiders’, deals with feelings of intense paranoia, warranted and unwarranted,” Wakefield said. “It delves into the quieter, wilder parts of the imagination that happen when you wake up in the middle of the night and have a suspicion that something is off or the feeling you get when you think you’re being followed. It’s about the obsessive spaces your mind can take you and the feelings of wanting complete control over your mental state, even if it means distancing yourself as an act of preservation. ‘Spiders’ was written the evening before we recorded the session and it ended up being one of our favorite songs on our new album.”
The song’s live rendition was recorded at northern Kentucky’s Candyland Recording Studio.
“It was kind of fun to try to treat it like a live show even though we were just all hanging out in this gorgeous music studio,” Wakefield said. “We all got super caffeinated and had this raucous, good time playing through our set.”
All the King’s Horses is out 7 September on SofaBurn Records. The 14-track album, featuring a particularly timely cover of David Bowie’s “I’m Afraid of Americans”, can be preordered here.
“We’re excited that it’s going to be out of our heads and into the world,” Wakefield said. “The album is a reflection of what we experienced as a band touring around this confusing and awesome country. It is a snapshot of what we have seen, lived through, and what’s been shared with us. The record aims to take you on a journey of personal and shared struggles and goes to some pretty vulnerable places. I hope that people listening to the record get some sort of cathartic release by the end of it. Huge thanks to John Hoffman who recorded and mixed All the King’s Horses and made it just as driving and layered as we imagined, to Alex Hug for mastering the record, and to Rachelle Caplan for making beautiful album art that represents our music completely.”